The Maryland-based software company whose technology played a role in the state’s COVID-19 vaccine-scheduling system fiasco last week appears to have cost Massachusetts almost half a million dollars, according to the Baker administration.
PrepMod, an offshoot of the Maryland Partnership For Prevention and Multi-State Partnership for Prevention that says it is “the state’s biggest online appointment vendor,” accepted responsibility for the chaos that ensued when about 1 million more people became eligible to get a vaccine appointment last Thursday, though other systems are believed to have failed as well.
The state’s COVID-19 Command Center provided a bundle of documents related to the contract with PrepMod to the News Service on Monday afternoon. A purchase order dated Aug. 21, 2020, billed the Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences $318,000 for “Enterprise Resource Planning Bundle and Services and Support.”
A separate document labeled as a quote indicates that the “Enterprise Resource Planning” bundle includes PrepMod, a clinic management system and an online consent form, and that the price tag includes a “statewide, lifetime user license” and one year of technical support.
A subsequent purchase order, this one dated Jan. 7, bills the bureau a total of $120,531. That total is split between $43,086 for a “Maryland Partnership for Prevention Project Manager” and $77,445 for “Maryland Partnership for Prevention Senior Development.” In each case, the payments appear to be for three months of work.
In sum, the two purchase orders detail $438,531 worth of costs due to PrepMod or its parent organizations. The administration also provided a copy of the business associate and confidentiality agreement between DPH and the Multi-State Partnership for Prevention, which lays out expectations around data privacy and storage.