Profiles in Government: A Closer Look at the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration

Considered the state’s primary health policy and planning entity, the Agency for Health Care Administration oversees Florida’s Medicaid program and shares health-care data with residents through the Florida Center for Health Information and Policy Analysis.

Below is more information about the agency, including who leads it, how many staff the department employs and what the department does as a whole.

FAST FACTS

Budget: The 2023 budget bill appropriated $35.6 billion total for AHCA, with a $1.2 billion IT budget for FY2024, according to the Center for Digital Government*.

Leadership: Scott Ward is the agency’s chief information officer.

Staff: According to SB 2500 or the Florida Senate’s General Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2023-2024, the agency has 1,539 employees.

MORE ABOUT THE AGENCY

According to the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability’s website, the state Legislature created the Agency for Health Care Administration under the Health Care Reform Act of 1992.

Since then, the agency’s responsibilities have grown to include overseeing the state’s $28.3 billion Florida Medicaid budget and the Florida Center for Health Information and Transparency, which collects, compiles, analyzes and disseminates health-related data to develop public policy and promote the transparency of consumer health-care information.

The agency also oversees the Office of Data Dissemination and Transparency, which processes patient data requests, provides technical assistance and manages floridahealthfinder.gov, which compiles patient health-care resources and information.

As for technology, SB 2500 lists the following line items for AHCA:

• $2 million to contract with the Florida Medical Schools Quality Network to develop quality metrics for Medicaid-eligible persons
• $1.4 million for data processing services from the Northwest Regional Data Center
• $770,00 for the agency’s Bureau of Financial Services Enterprise Financial System
• $700,000 to support Medicaid Program Finance and Data

Also appropriated is about $187.6 million for the agency’s Florida Health Care Connections (FX) project to replace the Florida Medicaid Management Information System (FMMIS). According to the agency’s website, the project focuses on “modernizing its approach to overall agency functions to build better connections to relevant data sources and programs and improve health care options and outcomes. “

To carry out the project’s mission, the agency has outlined a three-phase approach:

• Phase 1: In 2017, the agency procured a strategic enterprise advisory services vendor and an independent verification and validation vendor.
• Phase 2: From 2019 to 2024, the agency will “establish the technical foundation of the modular transformation through the agency’s procurement of an integration services and integration platform solution and an enterprise data warehouse solution.”
• Phase 3: From fall 2022 to now, the agency has transitioned “all or part of the current fiscal agent contract and (FMMIS), which includes activities to procure modules to transform and improve the FMMIS business processes and replace functionality with solutions that are interoperable with other systems within FX and the larger Florida Health and Human Services agency ecosystem.”

More information about the agency’s FX project can be found online.

*The Center for Digital Government is a division of e.Republic, which is the parent company of Industry Insider — Florida.