AHCCCS Awards 5-Year Contract for HEAplus Eligibility System Maintenance and Operations

AHCCCS recently announced a contract award for maintenance and operations of the Health-e-Arizona Plus (HEAplus) eligibility and enrollment system to Accenture. The contract award is $39 million over five years for maintenance and operations of the system, and $82 million over five years for new development and infrastructure that may occur over the term of the contract, for a total award of $121 million.

HEAplus provides an online system for consumers, eligibility workers, and community assistors. The system supports eligibility determinations and ongoing case management for State programs, including: Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) (known as KidsCare in Arizona), Medicare Savings Program (MSP), Arizona Long-Term Care System (ALTCS), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Arizona’s MyFamilyBenefits (Electronic Benefits Transfer [EBT] Portal).

Since its launch in October 2013, the Health–e-Arizona Plus (HEAplus) online eligibility system, jointly developed by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) and Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES), has undergone several system and user experience improvements. Combined, these improvements have eliminated manual staff processing time, increased the timeliness of eligibility determinations, and improved customer satisfaction.

• System automation has reduced the number of manual communication documents by 1.3 million between 2016 and 2018, creating an estimated savings of more than 110,000 hours of state employee time.
• More than 69 percent of HEAplus applications are submitted by the applicants themselves, community assistors, or other non-state employees.
• In 2019, 88 percent of eligibility renewals were entirely automated.
• More than 83 percent of users say HEAplus is “very easy or easy” to use.
• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rated HEAplus in the top 3 percent of Medicaid eligibility systems in the nation.

The contract award scheduled start date is October 1, 2020. More information is available in the AHCCCS Solicitations and Procurements Bidder’s Library for RFP YH20-0001 HEAplus Maintenance and Operations RFP.