Section 911 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) requires CMS to apply the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to contracts with its Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) contractors. Although FAR contracting is not new to CMS, the new Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) contracts will generally be much larger and more complex.

As the MACs are implemented, CMS will need to revise some systems and business processes to properly manage these contracts. How these revisions will affect your interactions with CMS depends on your role, but whatever your role or responsibilities, an understanding of how contracting in the future environment will differ from the current environment will help you get ready for the changes taking place.

In this lesson, you will learn about some of the differences in the current and future contracting environments and the acquisition process under the FAR.

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