Legislative Budget Requests Are Out: AHCA Asks for $195M for Tech

Legislative budget requests (LBRs) are officially out, providing more detailed information about state agencies’ tech funding needs for Fiscal Year 2025-26.

Each agency submitted their requests to Gov. Ron DeSantis on Oct. 15, who will then use that information to form his budget recommendations, which will be published no later than February 2025.

In the meantime, Industry Insider — Florida is reviewing each agency’s requests, starting with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), to better understand their tech funding needs.

In total, AHCA is requesting $195,038,186 for various tech projects.

The agency’s largest request by far is $189,958,744 “for the ninth year of the Agency for Health Care Administration strategic modernization project, Florida Health Care Connection (FX).”

“The FX project is a multi-year modernization of current Medicaid technology to replace the functions of the monolithic legacy system, Florida Medicaid Management Information System (FMMIS), through a phased approach by transitioning to an interoperable, scalable and unified Medicaid Enterprise System (MES) where individual processes, modules, sub-systems and systems work together to support the Medicaid program,” the agency’s legislative budget request states.

In December 2016, AHCA received approval from the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to implement a four-phased approach to replace FMMIS:

• Phase 1 established professional services, support and oversight
• Phase 2 established the FX infrastructure and focused on implementing an integration platform and enterprise data warehouse
• Phase 3, which began in FY 22-23 and is scheduled to be completed in FY 27-28, will replace the current FMMIS with new FX modules
• Phase 4 will focus on planning, procuring, replacing and modernizing any remaining Medicaid Enterprise Systems

“If this issue is not funded, AHCA will be unable to continue modernization of its health care enterprise systems to encompass the business, data, services, technical processes and systems necessary for the effective administration of the programs administered by AHCA, including the $33.7 billion Medicaid program that serves 4.5 million Floridians,” the agency’s legislative budget request states.

Other notable funding requests include:

• $2,650,000 for a background screening clearinghouse to handle fraud, abuse, waste prevention and detection activities for the state’s Medicaid program 
• $800,000 for Florida Planning, Accounting and Ledger Management System (PALM) readiness 
• $550,000 for a managed cybersecurity threat monitoring and response solution 
• $533,611 for a competitive pay adjustment to address retention and pay inequities related to IT 
• $400,000 for enterprise financial ecosystem maintenance 

More information about the agency’s legislative budget requests can be found online.