A New York-based subsidiary of Aetna has been tentatively selected to take over a contract, currently held by another Aetna subsidiary, to manage health care services for Arkansas public school and state employees.
The Department of Finance and Administration's Office of State Procurement posted a notice on Monday announcing that it intends to award the contract for medical management services to ActiveHealth Management, which proposed fees totaling $18.9 million over three years.
The notice gives the four other bidders for the contract 14 days to file a protest before a final contract award is issued to ActiveHealth Management.
One such protest, from Baton Rouge-based eQHealth Solutions, prompted State Procurement Director Edward Armstrong to overturn an earlier decision to award the contract to American Health Holding of New Albany, Ohio, which now provides the services under two contracts that expire Dec. 31.
American Health Holding had proposed fees totaling $27.5 million over three years.
Armstrong agreed with eQHealth that a bid evaluation committee that selected American Health Holding had violated a state policy requiring each member to individually score the companies' proposals.
He directed that a new committee be appointed to conduct another evaluation of the bids.
In that evaluation, American Health Holding once again received the highest technical score, but it ranked second in its overall score because its proposed cost was higher than ActiveHealth Management's.
EQHealth Solutions, which bid $21.8 million over three years, ranked fourth in its technical score and third overall.
Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which bid $32.4 million, ranked second in its technical score and fourth overall.
Redwood City, Calif.-based MedExpert had the lowest cost, $18.7 million, but came in last in technical score and overall score.
In both the initial and subsequent evaluations, the technical score was worth 90 percent of the overall score, with a score based on the proposed cost making up the remainder of the overall score.
The health plans cover more than 147,000 people, including 45,000 school employees, 26,000 state employees, retirees, and family members of employees and retirees.
The company awarded the medical management services contract will be responsible for guiding the care of patients with expensive medical needs, managing the care for employees in a weight-loss surgery program, reviewing the appropriateness of hospital admissions, and providing a phone number that employees can call to get health advice from a nurse.
The state solicited bids for the same contract last year and received responses from the same five companies as well as five others.
A committee that evaluated those 10 companies' proposals gave MedExpert the highest overall score, but state officials decided to throw out the submissions and issue a new solicitation.
Finance and Administration Department spokesman Jake Bleed said in an email last month that problems with the solicitation last year included "inconsistencies in how members of the [evaluation] committee scored competing vendors and significant variations in pricing among competing vendors."
State Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton and chairman of the Legislature's Joint Performance Review Committee, which questioned state officials about the procurement during hearings earlier this year, said Armstrong "went the extra mile to make sure all the t's were crossed and i's were dotted."
"He did a good job of making sure the process was good and fair," Hammer said.
Metro on 08/24/2016