CMS Sources Sought: $50M+Medicare Integrated Systems Testing (MIST)

This Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sources sought notice is a means of conducting market research to identify parties having an interest in and capable of performing services related to address the agency’s need for fully integrated testing functionality for the Fee for Service (FFS) ecosystem.  Details are provided below.

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Small business eyes $50M+ CMS Medicare Integrated Systems Testing (MIST) Opportunity, December 2023

Notice ID: 240952

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is issuing this sources sought synopsis as a means of conducting market research to identify parties having an interest in and capable of performing services related to address the agency’s need for “Medicare Integrated Systems Testing (MIST).”

The purpose of this contract is to provide CMS with fully integrated testing functionality for the Fee for Service (FFS) ecosystem, consisting of the following components: Fiscal Intermediary Shared System(FISS), Multi-Carrier System (MCS), Durable Medical Equipment (DME) Common Working File (CWF), Dental Claims Processing System (DCPS), the Benefits Coordination & Recovery Center/(BCRC)/Medicare Secondary Payer Systems Contractor (MSPSC) Coordination of Benefits Agreement (COBA) systems process, and the Medicare Payment System Modernization (MPSM). This functionality will manifest in ongoing test site(s) and technical support services/validation for both steady-state operational readiness and development capacity. With the goal of eliminating gaps that exist between the current Alpha, Beta and User Acceptance Testing, the MIST represents a continued evolution whereby testing further matures to be more modular and integrated, with abilities to test end-to-end; utilizing a production-like environment and infrastructure, in an effort to mimic real-world production scenarios. In order to help manage the complexity of Medicare FFS and ensure the stability of the system, CMS has established a rigorous change management process which includes independent testing by a third party outside of the shared system maintainer, however, this traditional approach has limitations in terms of agility and systemic coverage which CMS needs to overcome in order to address inevitable policy changes, business processes and technological obsolescence that inhibit system agility, flexibility and stability while driving up cost. The MIST represents a new phase/generation of the testing role for Medicare claims processing, whereby testing of the FFS ecosystem “shifts left” to become faster and increasingly integrated and automated, incorporating modern tools and methods with greater insight from Medicare claims processing business experience and operating within both the traditional CMS Systems Development Life-Cycle (SDLC) and the Agile framework of the MPSM project. Rather than independent testing, the MIST contractor will be responsible for comprehensive integration testing, inclusive of, but not limited to embedded test automation constructs at the code development stage, functional, validation, regression, system and performance testing for production readiness while maximizing the use of automation for all testing phases.

CMS seeks the skills of a testing team that is well-versed in industry standard software test engineering for both legacy Mainframe computing and modern Cloud computing infrastructure. This team should include, but not limited to, Software Test Engineering, Software Engineer Developer in Test (SDET), Performance Test Engineering and Test Automation Architecture. Roles and Responsibilities of the MIST contractor: A. Using a maximum amount of automation for all testing phases, the MIST contractor is responsible for performing ongoing test functionality of the FISS, MCS, DME System, CWF, DCPS, and BCRC. B. The MIST contractor is responsible for both modular and end-to-end testing of the MPSM. C. The MIST contractor will integrate the testing teams into the MPSM teams in the beginning of the contract to provide testing according to and ahead of the delivery schedule. D. In both operations steady-state and development state, MIST contractor is responsible for identifying problems in releases prior to their promotion into production. This includes establishing a new regression test suite based on an updated gold image. E. The MIST contractor is responsible for Integrated System Testing (IST) for all releases to the FISS, MCS (including Railroad Retirement Board RRB), DME System, DCPS, and CWF to emulate all functionality of the Medicare FFS claims processing environments…

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