DESY Retirement to Save CMS $1M/Year

The pending retirement of the Data Extract System (DESY), which has been used by employees and contractors for nearly 25 years to extract claims data, will mark the end of an era and save CMS about $1 million in contract costs per year.

Activity on the system has declined in recent years as rapid advances in self-service technology tools have enabled users to extract claims-related information on their own. As a result, CMS will pull the plug on DESY at the end of August. 

When it was introduced, DESY enabled users to extract data from the National Claim History (NCH) data reporting system on mainframes and other dependent systems for the first time. Today, DESY is considered a technological dinosaur. 

“DESY did what it was supposed to do,” says Edward Belle, Deputy Director of the Division of Data Operations and Maintenance (DDOM). “Up until a few years ago, there were close to 100 users who were very dependent upon the system. It was self-service, so as they needed data, they were able to generate queries to extract the needed data.” 

Three years ago, CMS decided to update DESY with a more modern look and feel that included easy-to-use screens that employees are accustomed to working on. While the modernization was underway, user activity began declining as self-service technology made it easier and easier to extract information. 

“We realized that users were becoming more innovative in taking on more modern tools to extract information,” Belle says. “They were becoming empowered by the tools and the utilization of DESY declined significantly. 

“With that being said, we do a monthly utilization analysis of our systems and we got to a point where there were just 10 end users or so using DESY. So it wasn’t a cost-effective tool to keep up and run.”

Because there are now so many available business intelligence tools available to meet the needs of users, no successor system is needed. 

“If users are having issues and need assistance extracting data, they can always submit their data request to the DDOM mailbox at CMSEDG_datarequests_intake@cms.hhs.gov,” Belle notes. “Someone on our team will assist them with access to the desired data.”