Bids Sought to Develop Medicaid Data Warehouse

The Utah Department of Health's Division of Health Care Financing is seeking

bids to develop a data warehouse to manage its Medicaid program.

Although the state has automated its data for processing claims, it

has been unable to centrally manage the program because it does not have

links to all the data.

"It's difficult for us to answer questions to manage the Medicaid program — [such as] who is eligible, how much money it costs to support individuals

and for budgeting purposes, how much it costs," said Paul Phillips, manager

of information technology at Utah's Health Department.

The state has 130,000 individuals eligible for Medicaid each month and

processes about 380,000 claims per month for the federal/state health care

program for the poor.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 3 p.m. March 31, and the state

is seeking bids to develop and implement a data warehouse during an 18-month

period.