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July 17, 2013 at 12:45 PM
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has completed testing part of the “data hub” that’s supposed to sit at the heart of the new exchange system.
CMS hopes to complete the rest of the testing by the end of August.
CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner gave Congress an update on data hub testing progress Wednesday at a hearing on the “Obamacare information sharing apparatus,” organized by a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subcommittee and a House Homeland Security Committee subcommittee.
CMS is developing the data hub to help the exchanges use IRS tax data and other federal government data to verfiy applicants eligibility.
CMS spent about $394 million between 2010 and March 31 to develop and test the hub, with $303 million of the funding going to 10 major contractors, witnesses said.
The agency began testing the hub connections with the IRS about a year ago, and 95 percent of the testing was done by the end of June, Tavenner said. CMS started testing integration with some state exchanges in February.
It also started testing integration with Social Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security and other state exchange systems earlier this summer, and that should be done by the end of August, Tavenner said.
Lawmakers at the hearing said they fear problems with implementing PPACA and setting up the hub could lead to data security and health information privacy problems.
