At FEI, we strive to have a meaningful impact on improving the delivery of care to those who need it most through purpose-driven innovation. One of our many strengths as an organization is our commitment to understanding the IT business needs of each individual customer so they can effectively manage their health and human services programs.

One of those needs, we know, is being able to afford and support the ongoing operation of innovative enterprise technology solutions. Implementing a brand-new enterprise care management system with all the bells and whistles necessary for effective program management is not cheap. By earning certification from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), our customers can qualify for millions in enhanced federal funding to operate these systems.

That’s why we support our customers’ efforts to achieve CMS certification by providing solutions that meet key evaluation criteria and offering consultative services during the certification process. Our solutions are designed to be well-positioned for CMS approval because they are secure and compliant with federal regulations, and they follow CMS guidance on interoperability. And, our teams work proactively to collect the artifacts, documentation, reports and resources required for presentation to CMS.

Typically, our customers seek to achieve certification within 12 months of going live with a new system. Our teams develop a certification crosswalk and help compile the documents needed in the three architecture domains defined for CMS certification – business architecture, information architecture and technical architecture. We assist in providing detailed artifacts and checklists for programmatic and functional critical success factors summary reports, along with CMS certification milestone reviews.

We are currently supporting our customers in Maine, Minnesota and Mississippi with finalizing their certification applications, and we expect certification for them in the coming months. Before these three, we successfully supported our customer in Washington, D.C. in obtaining CMS certification for our legacy LTSS solution. Ours was the first care management platform in the country to achieve such status – in 2018 – providing the District with enhanced funding in support of implementation and operations of our solution.

Our teams treat CMS certification support as an integral part of our implementation efforts. This is just another way we seek to relieve the administrative burdens that impact our customers’ ability to focus on what matters most to them – delivering the highest quality of care to those in need.