Situation Report | February 22, 2021
Agencies wanting to request a “debriefing” from the state Department of Health (DOH) on their applications under the Fiscal Intermediary (FI) Request for Offers (RFOs) process must do so by February 26. That is fifteen calendar days from the date of DOH’s award or non-award announcement (on February 11) — a deadline described in the RFO.
The debriefing is supposed to cover the applicant’s strengths and weaknesses. However, this has not been the case for the provider debriefings that HCA has learned about, which instead have described the evaluation process and told the applicant how many points they scored out of 100.
In addition to requesting a debriefing, applicants can protest DOH’s determination and file a written protest with the State Comptroller’s Bureau of Contracts. The protest must be filed within 10 business days of notice of the contract award or, if a debriefing has been requested by the interested party, within 5 business days of the debriefing (whichever is later). The protest procedures can be found in Chapter XI Section 17 of the Guide to Financial Operations.
As described in recent communications, DOH on February 11 announced the list of selected FIs and the counties they will serve. These included 68 out of 395 submissions.
Awards are subject to contract approval by the State Comptroller. Others have reported that this process can take up to 60 days or more.
FIs not selected should review MLTC Policy 21.01 regarding non-awarded FI closure obligations.
HCA held a webinar last week that covered the FI RFO and award process.