Policy & Practice | Fall 2026

“What stands out about New Mexico’s approach is the discipline and intentionality in how they’ve built governance and relationships across the ecosystem,” said Anil Sharma, Managing Director at KPMG LLP. “From our perspective, providing Transformation Advisory Services and the underlying system integration platform, it’s a model where align ment is not left to chance. It is actively designed into how the organization operates, how decisions are made, and how vendor partners, including KPMG, work together.”

extending capabilities from what has already been built and using estab lished integration patterns and design principles as the default starting point, rather than introducing bespoke fixes that erode scalability and sustainability over time. By avoiding fragmented solutions, the state helps ensure that the expe rience for New Mexicans remains coherent, even as new requirements are introduced. Success is increasingly measured not by the pace of change, but by the ability to deliver enhancements predictably while maintaining trust in day-to-day operations. In many ways, this phase of the journey requires a different kind of discipline. Building the ecosystem demanded transformation. Sustaining it requires stewardship. journey, New Mexico has entered a different phase. The work ahead is no longer defined by imple mentation schedules or major go-live events. It is defined by steward ship—maintaining alignment across a complex ecosystem, adapting to changing needs, and ensuring that the platform continues to deliver value over time. Value is measured not only in system performance, but in how effectively New Mexicans can access and rely on critical services. H.R. 1 offered an early glimpse of that future and demonstrated something important: the success of modernization is not measured by the day a system goes live, but by how effectively the enterprise responds to the changes that follow. Ultimately, New Mexico’s modern Medicaid enterprise is the product of years of leadership, relationships, dis cipline, and shared responsibility. For New Mexico HCA leaders, the accom plishment is about building something that will endure—a modern, resilient foundation designed to evolve with changing needs and support New Mexicans for years to come. The Next Chapter Years after embarking on its modernization

expectations for collaboration, and creating in-person forums that rein forced enterprise thinking across the ecosystem. Through recurring, in-person Partner Paloozas, project teams, vendor partners, and state leaders strengthened relationships, trans forming vendor management into a shared enterprise culture. That shared culture translates into more coordi nated execution and fewer gaps across systems—helping ensure a more con sistent and dependable experience for the people the system serves. “We made it very clear,” said Lorrina they were no longer separate teams. We are all Team New Mexico.” As the program matured, so did these gatherings. What once served primarily as a mechanism for coordination evolved into a reflection of the culture the state had intentionally cultivated. By the fourth Partner Palooza, following the Turquoise Claims go-live, alignment no longer required reinforcement—it had become embedded. Leaders point to that cultural shift in tangible ways: “The difference we’ve seen in our vendor collaboration from the first Partner Palooza to this most recent one is really incredible,” reflected Shanita Harrison, Deputy CIO at the New Mexico HCA. “It was really important to me that everyone felt like family—that we knew we were all in this together,” Morgan recalled. “We had fun. We danced down the aisles,” Rivera added. “We wanted vendors to know that we could laugh together and work together.” Together, these examples reflect a broader operating model grounded in intentional alignment across the ecosystem. Rivera, Assistant Deputy Director for the New Mexico HCA. “When vendor partners stepped into this project,

Attendees at a recent Partner Palooza.

Lessons From Maintenance and Operations As the state moves deeper into stabilization and enhancement cycles, the nature of the work continues to evolve. Large-scale transformation demands speed and execution. Sustaining a modular ecosystem requires consistency, discipline, and repeatability. Success increasingly depends on disciplined release man agement, dependency mapping, and the use of standardized processes and tools across teams and vendors. Ongoing success requires sustained collaboration, deliberate overcom munication, and continued alignment between business and IT to ensure that operational decisions reinforce— not fragment—the broader ecosystem. Experience has also reinforced the importance of preserving architec tural integrity as new requirements emerge. Rather than creating one-off solutions, it means deliberately

Fall 2026 Policy & Practice 27