Softrams and Snowflake: A Powerful Partnership
Softrams has deployed Snowflake across several of our contracts to harness the immense power of the cloud. This has enabled us to share previously siloed data that utilizes a near-zero management platform to deliver on a virtually unlimited scale while providing a seamless experience across multiple public clouds to execute diverse analytic workloads. As an Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner, Snowflake offers a full range of support for AWS-supported data warehousing, including support for AWS PrivateLink to allow Snowflake customers to easily and securely connect to their Snowflake instance without the need to access the internet.
Fraud Prevention System 2 (FPS2)
Since 2015, Softrams has served as a major subcontractor to Peraton (formerly Northrup Grumman IT) in support of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Fraud Prevention System (FPS). The original implementation of FPS Version 2 (FPS2) was in a CMS virtual data center and involved a custom blend of commercial-off-the-shelf products and open-source tools and frameworks. Recently, with significant Softrams support, FPS2 was migrated to the CMS AWS cloud with a lift-and-shift approach followed by a full technology stack modernization including a Snowflake data warehouse with analytics running in Databricks. Softrams engineers architected and modernized the Edits module that actively evaluates 15 million live claim lines daily for fraud, built the analytical data layers with provider and beneficiary data and over 20 billion historical Medicare claim lines, and supported the FPS2 web-based interface including investigative workflows. We also provided data coaching services to analytical contractors.
Innovative Design, Development, and Operations Contract (IDDOC)
Softrams supports CMS’s vision of improving health care quality and reducing the cost of services through implementing innovative health care models with alternative payment options. These innovation models serve over 20 million Medicare beneficiaries and require operational and performance management support to meet model policy objectives. Softrams manages the Accountable Care Organization Operating System (ACO-OS) using the SAFe framework and leverages human-centered design to tailor the delivery of needed information to the models. Softrams implemented a scalable and completely serverless replacement user interface for the system using AWS cloud-native and open-source software with functionality available via APIs (microservices). We maintain a Snowflake data warehouse (20 TB) and execute complex analytical processing for payment calculations and performance reporting. We also established a modern data hub to facilitate exchanging validated data with healthcare entities for their own analysis. This includes beneficiary files averaging 2.4 GB and monthly claims data files averaging 18.9 MB.
Health Plan Management System (HPMS)
Softrams provides legacy modernization and maintenance of the HPMS information system that plays a critical role in the daily operations and high-profile initiatives of the Medicare MA and Part D programs. Our team steered an evaluation of Snowflake to improve large volume data load performance (reducing time for PDP files to be loaded to the database). The evaluation showed the large PDP files that take up to 2 hours to load; using Snowflake the same PDP file can be loaded in under 5 minutes. We continue to incorporate lean practices utilizing Snowflake to minimize uncertainty, reduce waste, maximize value, and support flexibility for HPMS.
