Quality payment program

The challenge

The Quality Payment Program (QPP) is one of the largest healthcare payment reform initiatives in history, affecting over a million healthcare providers. CMS needed to build and maintain complex systems that could handle massive data volumes while remaining user-friendly for providers of all sizes.

Beyond the technical challenges, CMS needed to transform how their teams worked — moving from waterfall to agile methodologies while maintaining the reliability and security that healthcare systems demand.

Our approach

We embedded agile coaches across CMS teams to help them adopt modern delivery practices. Rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all methodology, we met teams where they were and helped them evolve their practices incrementally.

Our technical teams worked alongside CMS developers to implement DevSecOps practices, automated testing, and continuous deployment pipelines. We helped establish data analytics capabilities that enable better decision-making and program oversight.

The impact

The QPP systems now support over a million healthcare providers with near-perfect uptime. Teams that once struggled with lengthy release cycles now ship improvements continuously, responding to provider needs in days rather than months.

The cultural transformation has been just as significant as the technical improvements. Teams report higher satisfaction and engagement, and the agile practices we helped establish continue to spread across the organization.