By Greg Hazley
Ketchum has won a stimulus-funded $3.9M contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for a national education campaign about electronic health records.
The new pact follows the Omnicom unit's $25M-plus contract with the Dept. of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Office for Civil Rights awarded in March to guide an e-health record campaign. That contract, which covers PR and advertising, was also funded by the federal stimulus law.
The CMS is planning a national push to educate the public about e-health records and other forms of health information technology supported by the HITECH Act, which set aside $19 billion for grants and loans over four years to push the country's health system to more efficiency and cost-savings through technology.
Ketchum picked up the new assignment under so-called IDIQ rules which allow the government to pre-select a small group of contractors to choose from as need arises.
The HITECH Act has established programs under Medicare and Medicaid to provide incentive payments for the "meaningful use" of certified EHR technology.
Ketchum's contract from March was one of 100 stimulus projects singled out this month as "questionable" by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who tried to link the work to the controversial Armstrong Williams incident of five years prior.
"What do you do when a key government program is unpopular with the general public?" the senators asked rhetorically in their 74-page report. "In the case of the stimulus, you sign a multi-million dollar contract with a public relations firm previously embroiled in controversy."
|