SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- Emergency System for Advance Registration of Volunteer Healthcare Personnel (ESAR-VHP)
- Notice Date
- 10/6/2003
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Division of Procurement Management, 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 13A-19, Rockville, MD, 20857
- ZIP Code
- 20857
- Solicitation Number
- 04-N231-OSP-5001
- Response Due
- 11/6/2003
- Archive Date
- 11/3/2003
- Point of Contact
- Frantz Richard, Contract Specialist, Phone 301-443-0687, Fax 301-443-6038, - Frank Murphy, Contracting Officer, Phone (301) 443-5165, Fax (301) 443-6038,
- E-Mail Address
-
frichard@hrsa.gov, fmurphy@hrsa.gov
- Description
- The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Division of Healthcare Emergency Preparedness is seeking organizations with the capability (along with recommended approaches) to:(1) providing a model for an electronic database system usable by multiple parties to interface and provide linkages between the states resulting in a network and (2) providing technical assistance to State, Municipality, and Territory HRSA National Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Cooperative agreement grantees in the implementation of their own operational system based on this model. Preferably, this model should be established through identification, adaptation and or refinement of commercial off the shelf systems and will require partnering with governmental and non-governmental stakeholders to facilitate a total solution approach. Background The experiences of New York City hospitals in the aftermath of the World Trade Center destruction were instructive about the issues confronting the use of credentialed health care professionals in an emergency or mass casualty event. According to reports, hospital and medical personnel involved in the World Trade Center tragedy reported in interviews that they were not comfortable using medical volunteers when they were not able to verify their credentials. Identified barriers to volunteer use included: ? Inability to verify physician's identity or basic licensing or credentialing information ? Loss of telecommunications precluding hospitals from contacting sources that could have provided some credentialing or privileging information ? Limitations of resources to perform verification of the education, skills, training, or competencies of volunteers due to the extent of the emergency Validation and verification of a healthcare professional?s ability to provide certain medical services traditionally is done through review of licensure and the process of credentialing. Licensing, credentialing, accreditation, and privileging practices are performed at a local level and are done in a variety of ways. Jurisdiction over granting healthcare provider licenses resides at the state level. Individual health plans and provider organizations perform credentialing and license verifications; hospitals grant privileges to conduct patient care services and specialty organizations and governmental bodies grant certifications to different types of healthcare professionals. This results in different standards and a variety of processes for credentialing and assurance of licensure. Many of these processes are performed locally and healthcare institutions and States place restrictions against using healthcare personnel who have not previously been screened by them and found to meet their local requirements. These issues are problematic because in an emergency or mass casualty event, it is likely that the services of medical personnel from several jurisdictions in the surrounding area will be required, emphasizing the need to have a system that will support effective and efficient identification of qualified volunteer healthcare personnel. Several federal, state, community, and private sector entities are currently working on identifying ways to identify emergency workers. These include: ? Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness o Office of State and Local Preparedness ? Health Resources and Services Administration o Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program o Division of Practitioner Data Banks ? Office of the Surgeon General/USA Freedom Corps o Medical Reserve Corps Program ? National Institute of Standards and Technology o National Institute of Standards and Technology ? The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations ? American Hospital Association ? Federation of State Medical Boards ? American Board of Medical Specialties ? National Council of State Boards of Nursing To date there is neither an integrated system that can be accessed containing relevant, verified information about a practitioner's education, license(s) and competencies, nor a widely available model template that can be made available to the States to facilitate this type of integrated model. Purpose and Approach This proposed project will establish a model that will be referred to as the ?Emergency System for Advance Registration of Volunteer Healthcare Personnel (ESAR-VHP).? This model will be used to establish a network that will serve to enhance the ability of the healthcare system to respond in the event of an emergency or mass casualty event by facilitating a coordinated and uniform method of identifying volunteer healthcare personnel. Initial efforts and pilot testing should be focused on physicians, registered nurses and licensed mental health providers. Partnering with governmental and non-governmental entities is critical to the success of this project because both sectors have significant subject matter expertise and experience in creating and maintaining large databases of information that will be relevant to an advanced registration system. System Requirements Discussions for the establishment of a system for advance registration of healthcare personnel were initiated in May of 2002. Subsequent meetings included representation from a wide range of public and private organizations and resulted in the development of draft plans for a disaster credentials data bank. HRSA was asked to lead the efforts in establishing the model for the ESAR-VHP system. The system requirements that were identified in the draft plans were developed by a public and private working group for a disaster credentials data bank. These requirements have been reviewed, identified as critical, and adopted (with slight revisions) for use in this project. They are: System Capabilities 1. The advance registration system should be open to, and inclusive of, a broad range of health professionals (beyond nurses and physicians) and other skilled personnel for disaster mitigation and response. 2. The system should capture and maintain information regarding licensure, medical privileges, education, training and special competencies for dealing with disasters. 3. The captured information should be standardized to the extent possible in order to make it useful, recognizing that there may be different requirements for different types of response teams. 4. The content of the information maintained in the system, including the possibility of new types of competency information, should be determined by experts in both the public and private sector, with significant input from the health professions and from the potential users of the system. 5. The system should be able to support multiple use that can interface and provide linkages between the states providing a network. 6. The system should be designed for interoperability that will support both National and local response needs. It must be able to optimize collaboration and coordination of volunteers among agencies; among communities; and between government and private sector allied interests. 7. The system should be searchable (e.g. by specific provider competencies and physical locations relative to the need), which will assist in modeling and scenario planning in advance of disasters. 8. The database should be created and administered in close partnership with the federal and the private sector. System Operations 1. The system should have standards for the verification and periodic updating of the information. 2. The system should support rapid, accurate retrieval of the information "onsite" of a disaster with a backup plan in the event the primary system is inoperable. 3. The system should be able to assist in the authentification of volunteers through such means as biometric or by other, lower cost options such as security codes. 4. The system should meet standards for authorized use, security and confidentiality that provide an acceptable comfort level to both volunteers and users of the system. Information technology 1. The system should be built with an open architecture and common platform that relies upon the Internet and on existing databases (e.g., those held by states, physician and medical specialty groups) and sources of medical and health professional information. 2. The system should not depend solely on working telecommunications capacity. The backup utility to the system (particularly for information being retrieved at the site of a disaster) should utilize technology (like the smartcard) that meets national interoperability standards. 3. The information technology (IT) infrastructure should support file segmentation where necessary to accommodate the preferences of volunteers and to assure the security of proprietary databases. Critical stages in project development: 1. Project Plan with identifiable milestones to include: establishment of system requirements, identification of data and verification requirements, identification of acceptable verification sources, policy issues, operational issues, etc. 2. Delivery of a preliminary functional ESAR-VHP model with incorporation of the basic requirements and a Project Plan for ?Pilot Testing.? 3. Pilot Testing and refinement of the ESAR-VHP model 4. Delivery of an effective functional operational ESAR-VHP model Project Plan for providing technical assistance to State, Municipality and Territory grantees to facilitate network development and national implementation. The performance period for this contract is (1) one year from the date that the contract is awarded with the possibility of additional years of renewal based on evaluation and agency need. . It is HRSA?s intention to synopsis and release a Request for Proposal (RFP) for these, or like services in a future FedBizOpps announcement. This synopsis is for planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation for bids/proposals. The government will not pay for any information submitted in response to this announcement. Letters of Interest, capability statements, and the level of interest your firm can commit toward this project should be submitted to the point of contact for this notice. It will be accepted for 30 calendar days following the date of this notice. Letters of Intent should address the following areas: 1. Company or organization history 2. Company?s experience with similar projects 3. Brief description of your understanding of the proposed projects (limit to 10 pages) 4. Recommendations (Ex. technical feasibility, methodology, design plans, etc) This is a sources sought announcement. It is not a solicitation.
- Record
- SN00448159-W 20031008/031006213117 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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