Client:

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)

Industry:

Healthcare

Services:

Integrated Health Optimization

Digital Modernization

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Key Figures:
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• ‍75% reduction in page download time compared with legacy technology and cloud-based infrastructure
• ‍>20% increase in new site visitors from >1.9 million to >2.3 million
• ‍12% decrease in pages visited by users to complete their work
• ‍83 days to build, test, and deploy legacy modules
• ‍40% increase in average server response time
• ‍8% reduction in time spent by system user to complete necessary tasks

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Summary:

HPMS is a web-enabled information system that serves a critical operational role in facilitating data collection and reporting, on-going operations, strategic planning, and analysis.

Our partnership led to the successful migration of the HPMS system to the cloud as we continue incremental modernization of its platform.

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Awards Won:

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Challenge: Cloud Migration of a Mission Critical National Application

Existence of legacy ASP and .NET technology built over a period of nearly 3 decades challenged the performance, cost of operations and management ofthe Increasingly complex operations of HPMS which not only is to support high profile initiatives and facilitate mandated data collection and reporting functionalities.

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Solution: Softrams Meets the Challenge

Using an MSE (Modern Software Engineering) approach with a cloud-first API development strategy and agile development techniques, Softrams modernized the HPMS to provide an all-new digital one-stop solution for Medicare Advantage (MA) and Prescription Drug (Part D) health plans. The system handles various end-user interactions such as application submissions, formularies, bids, marketing materials, auditing documentation, data for plan reporting and assessment, complaint tracking, and financial reporting - all provided in a modernized cloud infrastructure and modern suite of tools and technologies.

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• Modern Technology
  
  • Used the modern CMS.gov technology stack and CMS Enterprise Cloud for faster load times, better site reliability, automated testing, and advanced security.

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• CMS APIs
  
  • Created new APIs for source submission and enrollment data, including formulary/pricing files, satisfaction scores, and enrollment data download times.

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• Design System
  
  • Created an HPMS users “Design System and Content Style Guide” incorporating the results of end-user research to create a consistent “one HPMS” experience.

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• Global Content Strategy and Governance
  
  • Rebuilt and differentiated website content for different levels of governance—CMS (national), States (regional), plans, and compliance and regulatory (local) users—to provide ease of data access without duplicative or redundant content.

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• New Landing Page
  
  • Built a new HPMS landing page – the first in 20 years – to provide industry and plan users access to information and supporting artifacts without the need for system access.

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Outcome: The Next Generation of HPMS

Softrams built out the AWS environments using Terraform/Ansible using Infrastructure as Code (IaC). We overcame significant challenges to rapidly build, test, and deploy legacy ASP and .NET modules within 83 days – in record time for a massive CMS application of this size.

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We successfully:

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• Provided CMS with the ability to build/rebuild any environment in less than an hour.

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• Built a new module for Prescription Drug Pricing files using Aurora DB and NodeJS technology to handle more than a billion daily record files in near real-time.

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• We migrated all 40 HPMS modules to AWS in less than 3 months, a record time for an application of its size. Alongside continuous integration, we also built 13 additional modules under the newer framework as a first step in the modernization transition. The incremental path supports the legacy technologies alongside new and modern AWS technologies.

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• Built a modern platform for fraud, waste, and abuse control and advanced features like heat maps and dashboards to assist plan users and federal investigators.

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• Integrated HPMS with Medicare.gov to provide near real-time data updates and better plan selection data for Medicare beneficiaries.

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• Modernized 12% of the legacy ASP applications to a modern Angular framework with plans to complete up to 25% by Q2 2021.

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• Automated file transfers with built-in monitoring to enable seamless data transfer to all downstream systems for mission critical operations.

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• Enabled a smooth dual database operation, including legacy applications maintained in AWS Oracle RDS and a new cloud Aurora database for all modules built after migration: and synchronized these in real-time for a single system user experience.