Data Modernization:
Migrating 500 TB of Medicare Claims Data

Introduction

The National Claims History (NCH) data repository represents one of the most comprehensive historical data stores of Fee for Services (FFS) Medicare claims assembled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The NCH data includes Inpatient, Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF), Outpatient, Home Health Agency (HHA), Hospice, Carrier, and Durable Medical Equipment (DME) claims dating back to 1991.

In support of the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act and the Cloud First initiative, CMS selected CORMAC to migrate 500+ terabytes of CMS’ NCH data to the cloud. The project uses Agile Scrum and DataOps to move the data from IBM mainframe to AWS cloud. Transitioning to a cloud environment offers new benefits such as flexibility in data sharing, scalability, and lower costs by leveraging commodity hardware.

Business Benefits/Outcomes

By moving NCH data to the cloud, CORMAC enables:

• Increased collaboration due to easier data sharing among internal and external stakeholders
• Faster access to data
• Centralized access to data for authorized users, regardless of their location
• A pathway to increase the value of data. This can be done by leveraging evolving technology and tools such as “As a Service” and a modern technology stack that includes open source.
• Reduced cost of ownership of commodity hardware for storage and cloud services

Additionally, CORMAC is uniquely positioned to support the evolution of NCH and other CMS business applications. Business professionals at CORMAC have developed and supported many of the current business applications that CMS will move to the cloud. The intellectual capital they gained from those engagements will drive down lead times and increase the speed of deployment while avoiding rework.

Innovations to Bring Business Value

The NCH migration to cloud is one of the early efforts to modernize the legacy systems at HHS/CMS. As a result of COMRAC’s work on this engagement, the company plays a key role in modernizing the flow of claims history from the point of origin to planners, policy makers, clinical architects and legislators.

Additionally, CORMAC strengthens CMS’ ability to transition and repurpose legacy data in support of current and future business needs.

Automated Data Pipelines: the next steps forward in DataOps

CORMAC built a completely automated data pipeline using Agile Scrum methodology, DataOps, and AWS cloud-native technologies and services. CORMAC leveraged AWS’ commodity hardware (S3 and Glacier), optimized resources and used a combination of COTS and open source technologies to improve cost efficiency. The data was moved in an incremental fashion using DataOps best practices.