“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is getting ready to support millions of people looking to purchase health care coverage next month through Healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance marketplace.”
“During GovernmentCIO Media & Research’s Digital Health Modernization virtual event last week, CMS Deputy CIO Bobby Saxon — who originally joined the agency as CTO of Healthcare.gov in 2017 — explained that the website will see a ‘surge of new customers’ this year for its annual November open enrollment period due to the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Since the agency shifted its website from legacy mainframe systems to the cloud in 2019, however, Saxon said the site is well-prepared to handle the influx in web traffic, without users experiencing any significant downtime or delays.”
“’In an old environment, it would’ve been nearly impossible to do the kind of expansion needed to improve performance and stability. But in the cloud, we will have upsized our capability to 2.5 times that of normal,’ explained Saxon. ‘That beginning step toward modernization — of simply moving to the cloud — positioned us to be even more ready for open enrollment.’”
“Jessica Weeden, designer and project lead for U.S. Digital Service’s Medicare payment system modernization, said that the cloud allows CMS to scale multiple systems in one accessible environment, enabling the agency to achieve and maintain operational flexibility and agility…” Read the full article here.
Source: CMS Prepares for ‘Surge’ in New Visitors on Healthcare.gov – By Faith Ryan, October 5, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
