Documents accompanying contract with CGI pulled from state website

by Morgan True vtdigger.org Internal documents originally posted on the Department of Vermont Health Access website that were posted with the state’s health care exchange IT contract were taken down to eliminate confusion, officials said Thursday.
The state’s contract with the Canadian IT company CGI is longer and more complex than most state contracts; memos and routing forms that predate the final contract and amendments were removed last month to eliminate confusion, DVHA spokeswoman Emily Yahr said.
One of the routing forms included a higher dollar amount that was later negotiated down, Yahr said. The documents were pulled by the department’s business office after a reporter pointed out the discrepancy, she said in an email.
The withdrawn memos include a letter from Charles Lehman, director of the Division of State Systems for the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), explaining its conditional approval of an amended contract with CGI.
In another memo from Mark Larson, commissioner of DVHA, to Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding, Larson explains that, due to time constraints in meeting federal deadlines, the state was encouraged by CMS to hire CGI without a full procurement process based on ‘the favorable terms and conditions’ in similar contracts CGI had inked with Colorado and Hawaii.
The routing forms, which are used internally during the contracting process, caused most of the confusion, Yahr said in an email. If the language in the memos aligns with the final contract, she said there would be no reason not to repost them.
All public documents relating to DVHA contracts are available from its offices, Yahr said, including the memos and routing forms.