That would be Novitas, which got the no-bid contract to build the Healthcare.gov back end — which is still mostly MIA with the January 1 deadline rapidly approaching. Jeryl Bier discovered that Novitas is busy on another project for HHS, and that’s going about as well as ObamaCare:
Novitas already administers three different Medicare-related healthcare programs for HHS, including the Medicare Administrative Contract for Jurisdiction H, which covers seven south-central states.
Coincidentally, Novitas launched a new website for Jurisdiction H on September 29, just two days before the launch of the main Obamacare site. The new Jurisdiction H website has experienced problems reminiscent of those experienced by Healthcare.gov, and some of the “fixes” will not be in place until well into 2014. In fact, the latest update from Novitas informed users that the Jurisdiction H website would be taken offline completely at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, December 18, for up to five hours for maintenance.
A report on the website of the Oklahoma Hospital Association (OHA) on December 4 gave some details of the issues facing users of the troubled Novitas Medicare site[.]
Unlike with the Healthcare.gov site, Novitas maintains a web page with the status of its issues for Jurisdiction H’s system. The report raises a couple of questions, though. First, why did HHS assign the Healthcare.gov contract on a no-bid basis to a firm that is busy fixing its other work for HHS instead of seeking a contractor that could provide a clear focus on the ObamaCare project? Second, what exactly is Novitas’ priority here?
Be sure to read all of Jeryl’s report.
