VA contract to automate purchased care claims processing
By Peter Buxbaum
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Department of Veterans Affairs awarded a contract potentially worth $60 million to Document Storage Systems Inc. to help process claims for purchased healthcare. Purchased care is healthcare obtained from commercial providers outside the VA healthcare system.
DSS specializes in developing clinical and administrative programs for VistA, the VA's electronic medical record system and develops VistA interfaces with commercial vendors.
The DSS system will simplify management and tracking of purchased care claims processing, the company said, and will reduce manual data entry. The system incorporates electronic data interchange (EDI) for claims processing, integrated with VistA clinical and financial systems.
The contract provides an “interim enterprisewide system to support purchased care claims management through automation that produces standardization across Veterans Affairs facilities," said Wayne Miller, a VA contract specialist.
The Juno Beach, Fla.-based DSS will receive close to $15 million during the one-year base period of the contract. The contract includes three option years which could bring DSS a total of nearly $60 million if all the options are exercised. DSS was chosen from among seven proposals VA received through full and open competition.
DSS worked with Complete Medical Systems, MEGAS, Unicor Medical, and VistA Revenue Solutions to create the solution it calls the Fee Basis Claims System (FBCS).
