Focus on 'simplifying and streamlining the customer experience'
The world's largest consulting firm has secured a five-year contract to continue its work on the federal government's health insurance marketplace.
Officials at the San Francisco-based tech services and consulting firm Accenture announced this week the firm has officially inked a $563 million contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, enabling it to continue building and maintaining the HealthCare.gov website.
[See also: Costs of HealthCare.gov fiasco near $1B.] [See also: Hackers tap into HealthCare.gov.]
CMS brought Accenture on starting January 2014 to help fix the government's glitch-ridden website that went live in October 2013. Since then, the firm has worked on supporting the marketplace's applications, eligibility and enrollment functions, in addition to generating enrollment forms. According to company officials, the firm also delivered specific technology services related to website architecture to enable higher user capacity.
This new five-year contract will have an emphasis on streamlining and simplifying the process for issuers to update plans, in addition to focusing on improving customer experience, officials pointed out.
"Our work in all of these areas will continue under the new contract, as we continuously enhance the capability supporting citizens, issuers and CMS – focused on simplifying and streamlining the customer experience," said Matt Tait, the senior managing director who leads Accenture's work on the project, in a press statement announcing the contract.
[See also: New CEO takes helm at HealthCare.gov.]
"We see this new contract as a strong vote of confidence in Accenture's ability to continue assisting CMS in building and maintaining the site that has allowed millions of Americans to gain access to healthcare insurance," added David Moskovitz, chief executive of Accenture Federal Services, in a statement.
Despite the company's success in securing a renewal contract, Accenture has faced recent criticism over its history of past projects that have not been considered successful by some.
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