CMS to rethink awards under $3.5B RMADA contract

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is rethinking the award decisions it made earlier this summer for its $3.5 billion blanket purchase agreement for a range of data-related and research services.

Accenture Federal Services and the Rand Corporation were left off the list of 17 winners and went to the Government Accountability Office to challenge the evaluation of their proposals.

Rand filed its protest on July 29 with Accenture following on Aug. 3. When CMS informed GAO that it was taking corrective action to reevaluate their proposals and consider them for an award, GAO dismissed the protests on Aug. 20.

Known as RMADA for Research, Measurement, Assessment, Design and Analysis, the BPA is used for analytical support and technical assistance to aid CMS in models and demonstrations. CMS uses those models for programs such as the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program and those covered under private payer sources.

This is the third iteration of RMADA and CMS spent $1.2 billion in task orders since 2019, according to GovTribe data.

For RMADA 3, CMS received 34 proposals. Awards were given to the companies with the highest technical scores and reasonable prices.

The following 17 companies won spots on the BPA:

• Abt Global (incumbent)
• Actuarial Research Corp.
• Acumen (incumbent)
• American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences (incumbent)
• Arbor Research Collaborative for Health (incumbent)
• Booz Allen Hamilton (incumbent)
• Deloitte Consulting (incumbent)
• General Dynamics’ IT services unit (incumbent)
• Guidehouse (newcomer)
• L&M Policy Research (newcomer)
• The Lewin Group, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth’s Optum arm (incumbent)
• Livanta, now part of Commence (newcomer)
• Mathematica (incumbent)
• National Opinion Research Center (incumbent)
• RTI International
• Tria Federal (newcomer)
• Westat (incumbent)