Medicaid Provider Enrollment Screening Challenge Series

About the Challenge

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), is announcing the launch of the “CMS Provider Screening Innovator Challenge.”  This Challenge is sponsored by CMS and is presented as part of the Partnership for Program Integrity Innovation program, and will be administered by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s (NASA) Federal Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation.  This Challenge addresses CMS goals of improving our abilities to streamline operations, screen providers, and reduce fraud and abuse. Specifically, the challenge is an innovation competition to develop a multi-State, multi-program provider screening software application which would be capable of risk scoring, credentialing validation, identity authentication, and sanction checks, while lowering burden on providers and reducing administrative and infrastructure expenses for States and Federal programs. More information pertaining to the Medicaid and CHIP programs can be found at www.medicaid.gov.

The Challenge competition begins at 6:00 pm, EDT, May 30, 2012, and is expected to be completed by the October/November 2012 timeframe. We estimate that the total prize amount for the competitions conducted as part of this Challenge will fall between $500,000 and $600,000. Entrants are asked to develop artifacts and components of software applications that can be integrated into an open source solution that can deliver a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective provider-screening capability for multiple States (or for the nation). Challenge competition entries will be judged by an expert panel composed of CMS program staff. Judges shall be named after commencement of the Challenge.  Competitions will be judged based upon both subjective and objective criteria

Interested persons should read the Official Rules and register at the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation Challenge portal:  http://community.topcoder.com/coeci/.  Registration is free and can be completed at any time before an entry is submitted in response to a particular competition.