The California departments of Public Health (CDPH) and Technology (CDT) have hired OptumInsight Inc., the health-care tech business of Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Optum, to stand up a new system to “collect, track and report COVID-19 cases,” CDPH said Tuesday. Optum is part of UnitedHealth Group. The contract award “ensures the data quality, management and overall efficiency of reporting California’s COVID-19 lab results,” state Chief Information Officer and CDT Director Amy Tong told Techwire via email.
“It is an excellent example of how the state continues to evolve and streamline its procurement processes – reducing the time from around six months to only 11 days, in this instance. I would like to recognize and congratulate the CDT and CDPH teams who collaborated around-the-clock to drive, negotiate and close this procurement in record time,” Tong said. Among the takeaways:
• The California Reportable Disease Information Exchange (CalREDIE), the state’s database for reporting on infectious diseases, may remain. CDPH described the new solution as “supplementing California’s current disease registry system known as CalREDIE,” but not specifically replacing it. CDPH described it as a new, standalone “software solution built to manage the large volume of data currently tracked as a result of the pandemic” and designed to “help improve the efficiency of the system that receives data from laboratories and local public health departments and prepares data for reporting and analysis.”
CalREDIE, reportedly launched in 2011, “was not built for this volume of data,” California Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said last month. Its shortcomings came to light in early August when computer problems were among the factors leading to a significant undercount of COVID-19 cases. Nearly all local health offices use CalREDIE to track disease data and transmit it to the state. In a disclaimer in early August on its data dashboard, Placer County said CalREDIE was “experiencing serious unresolved processing delays”; Sacramento County health officials said the system was “experiencing issues processing incoming reports.” CDPH described the situation then as “issues with the state’s electronic laboratory reporting system” that led to “under-reporting of actual positive cases in one single-day,” in a note on a graph on confirmed daily case increases. CDPH Acting Director Sandra Shewry said in a statement that officials “recognize the need for innovative and modern tools to get in front of COVID-19.”
“We are taking meaningful action to update how we collect, analyze and report COVID-19 data, which is central to our ongoing statewide response and the actions local public health directors take every day to protect the health and well-being of Californians,” she added.
• CDPH and CDT have hired OptumInsight for six months, the duration of the contract, at a cost of $15.3 million. The contract began Aug. 25 with the option of two six-month extensions, CDT told Techwire via email. CDPH described OptumInsight as a “global company that provides data, software and services to health care companies and government agencies to optimize their operations”; it said the system’s first phase would be up and running in October. The company is providing “a cloud solution for the data quality, management, integration, and warehouse of all COVID-related data,” CDT said. The timing and focus of additional phases is unclear.
“We are mobilizing our proven health IT capabilities to standardize, analyze, and publish COVID-19 test results and to provide public health officials with the quality data they need to make critical decisions and support communities across the state,” OptumInsight CEO Robert Musslewhite said in a statement. An Optum representative noted that the company already provides COVID testing at 85 locations in 42 counties, and offers care delivery and other services to more than 3 million Californians.
• Funding for the contract will come from “the federal Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC) grant,” CDPH said. According to the most recent information available from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for the 2019 federal fiscal year ending July 31, California received slightly more than $10.2 million via ELC award. It’s unclear where the state will derive the remainder of the contract value.
• The state’s three-phase procurement process began Aug. 12 with the release of an RFP and was conducted under Public Contract Code 6611, which allows negotiation with vendors. The first phase involved initial responses, evaluations and notifications of up to five bidders that they would advance. Phase 2, which closed Aug. 19, involved proofs of concept demonstrations. Phase 3 included statements of work development and negotiations; a tentative contract award was then slated for Aug. 24.
