When the Stakes Are High: Our Take on Client-Centricity at CMS

It’s a familiar scenario: a client under pressure to trim budgets but still deliver the same results, all while juggling deadlines, leadership questions, and shifting priorities. In moments like that, being a true partner means making their jobs a little easier. That means adapting along with your clients, anticipating their needs, and giving them options when the road ahead is uncertain.

We’ve seen this approach come to life across several of our CMS projects. 

Anticipating Needs 

When the CMS Innovation Center and the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) faced shifts in funding, we helped them achieve the same impact with efficiency. We worked collaboratively to reassess priorities, streamline work where possible, and find creative ways to deliver results. That spirit of flexibility and shared problem-solving is at the heart of how we approach partnership. 

Bottom Line Up Front 

Delivering value means providing insights so CMS teams can act quickly and with confidence. We focus on delivering concise memos, clear graphics, and dashboards that put the bottom line up front. Under the Quality Reporting Program and Value-Based Purchasing (QRP VBP) contract for CMS, we’ve shifted toward shorter, sharper deliverables that respect our clients’ time—while still offering depth when they need it. Instead of distilling lengthy reports, CMS teams can see the insights upfront. 

Co-Creating Solutions 

Just as important as actionable insights are tools and solutions that involve CMS throughout the design process. Through our Medicaid Managed Care Oversight Support project, we bring in CMS from the very beginning, sharing initial wireframes, testing basic functionality, and refining based on their feedback. Agility carries the day: An offhand comment by CMS in a meeting may translate into a new data visualization or filter, all to make their jobs easier. By co-designing tools, we ensure the final product isn’t just functional—it’s genuinely usable and built around how CMS teams work. By the time we deliver the final product, it already feels like theirs because they’ve shaped it every step of the way. 

Client-centricity is not a corporate slogan or a box to check. It’s a culture. It’s the day-to-day choices we make as researchers, analysts, and developers to deliver something useful, usable, and timely. 

CMS doesn’t need contractors who just execute. They need partners who listen, anticipate, and adapt. That’s the standard we hold ourselves to at Abt. 

Connect with us: CGO@abtglobal.com