CMS Renews Bellese Technologies Contract for Medicare Cost Estimator

(BALTIMORE, MARYLAND) The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded Bellese Technologies the Medicare Cost Estimator (MCE) 2.0 contract. Bellese is the incumbent prime contractor for this project and has been awarded the MCE contract for the second time. This contract period consists of one base-period with two additional option-years. In collaboration with the CMS Office of Communications (OC), Bellese delivered CMS’s first price transparency tool, Procedure Price Lookup (PPL), in support of the 21st Century CURES ACT.

“The dedication and drive of the Office of Communication to give the best user experience to Medicare beneficiaries and their caretakers is second to none. We look forward to working by their side for another 3 years,“ said Pam Offutt, Bellese Chief Executive Officer.

The products developed under the MCE contract are part of the CMS eMedicare suite of tools. The tools are designed to deliver a personalized user experience with information that empowers people to better understand cost information as it relates to care and coverage, and to use the information to get the best value when choosing healthcare providers and coverage. Bellese’s strategic focus on human-centered design practices and exploratory data analysis pinpointed multiple opportunities for price awareness by beneficiaries and caregivers. Bellese uses a hypothesis-driven rapid prototyping process and an API-first approach to develop products. In addition to the PPL tool, the MCE products include the PPL American Medical Association (AMA) API, Office Visit Pricing API, Durable Medical Equipment (DME) Supplier Directory, and an Imaging Pricing API.

“It’s exciting to see our user and data-driven design and development process at work on MCE. Extending our clinical ontology with machine learning to provide an Ontology-as-a-Service solution will improve the information we put in the hands of beneficiaries and caretakers when they need it most.” said John duClos, Bellese Chief Technology Officer.

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ABOUT BELLESE TECHNOLOGIES

Founded in 2009, Bellese Technologies is a human-centered service design company in the Baltimore metro area. Bellese partners with health and human services clients in the public and private sectors. The firm leverages modern technology, human-centered design, and silo-busting collaboration to help its clients expand and accelerate the positive impact they have on society. Currently, Bellese works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, supporting price transparency, Medicare payment system modernization, and quality of care initiatives. Bellese holds the GSA IT 70 Schedule and two CMS agile blanket purchase agreements (BPA) — the Medicare Payment System Modernization (MPSM) BPA and the Agile Delivery to Execute Legislative Endeavors-Quality Related Initiatives (ADELE-QRI) BPA. Bellese was recently recognized as a “Top Workplace” by the Baltimore Sun for the third year in a row. Visit bellese.io/careers for more information on careers at Bellese.