MODIFICATION
D -- Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)
- Notice Date
- 11/21/2005
- Notice Type
- Modification
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Contracts Management, 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD, 20850
- ZIP Code
- 20850
- Solicitation Number
- AHRQ-06-0009
- Response Due
- 12/7/2005
- Archive Date
- 12/22/2005
- Point of Contact
- Sharon Williams, Contracting Officer, Phone 301 427-1781, Fax 301 427-1740, - Mary Haines, Contracting Officer, Phone 301 427-1786, Fax 301 427-1740,
- E-Mail Address
-
swilliam@ahrq.gov, mhaines@ahrq.gov
- Description
- This previously announced sources sought notice is amended to extend the due date for submission of capability statements to December 7, 2005. Nothing else has been changed. Title: Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). This is not a solicitation announcement. This is a sources sought synopsis only. The purpose of this sources sought notice is to gain knowledge of potential qualified sources and their size classifications (large business, small business, HUBZone, 8(a), Veteran-owned, small disadvantaged business, etc.) relative to the NAICS Code. The NAICS Code for this requirement is 541519 with a size standard of $21 million. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is conducting a market survey to seek potential sources from firms which have the capability to conduct the next phase of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) contract. HCUP is a family of health care databases and related software tools and products developed through a Federal-State-Industry partnership and sponsored by the AHRQ. HCUP databases bring together the data collection efforts of State data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the Federal government to create a national information resource of patient-level health care data. The participation of State Partners is essential for the success of the HCUP project and is based on cooperative, detailed agreements made between AHRQ and each data Partner. The majority of States have programs in place to collect discharge records describing all hospitalizations within the State. Increasing numbers of States are expanding their data collection efforts into the areas of outpatient care such as emergency room and ambulatory surgery. Currently, there are 39 States with data organizations that currently participate as HCUP Partners by sharing their data with AHRQ. HCUP involves many activities, a subset of these are achieved through a contract mechanism. The current HCUP contract (Sept. 2000 ? Sept. 2006) has expanded greatly from building State and national databases in earlier years. The project now includes activities such as user support, electronic documentation, central data distribution, training, and expansion into outpatient data, among others. As currently designed, the HCUP contract annually produces over 80 inpatient, ambulatory surgery, and emergency department state-level databases, 2 national databases, over 30 publicly disseminated databases, 10 software tools, and numerous presentations and trainings; receives over 500,000 hits per year on the HCUP Web site; and responds to approximately 2,000 technical assistance and data support inquiries per year. The HCUP family of health services databases includes: HCUP State databases ? state-specific annual inpatient and outpatient discharge and visit level data files; HCUP nationwide databases ? nationwide samples derived from the HCUP State databases enabling focused research on special populations; and other HCUP databases ? auxiliary databases that are used to augment information in the HCUP State and nationwide databases. These databases enable research on a broad range of health policy issues, including cost and quality of health services, medical practice patterns, access to health care programs, and outcomes of treatments at the national, State, and local market levels. The HCUP databases are quite large in size. The annual national database contains approximately 8 million records; the total of all the State inpatient records in a given year is approximately 32 million, and the total of all ambulatory surgery and emergency department records in a given year is approximately 16 and 17 million respectively. Detailed descriptions of the project and data can be found at the HCUP Web site at: www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov . The next phase of HCUP will meet the following objectives in support of AHRQ?s mission to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare for all Americans: create and enhance a powerful source of national, State, and all-payer health care data; produce a broad set of software tools and products to facilitate the use of HCUP and other administrative data; enrich a collaborative partnership with statewide data organizations aimed at increasing the quality and use of health care data; and conduct and translate research to inform decision making and improve healthcare delivery. The core component of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) contract is processing, and creating uniformly formatted State inpatient and outpatient encounter-level data files obtained from HCUP Partners. Processing the data includes checking the quality of data received and developing additional analytic data elements from the source data. The data are often derived from billing records; thus, they are often submitted in formats consistent with the Uniform Bill-92 (UB-92) and occasionally with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Form 1500 (CMS-1500) (although many of the statewide data organization deviate from these national standards in coding and data content). HCUP purchases inpatient and outpatient (ambulatory surgery and emergency department) data files from the HCUP Partners. Once the data files are purchased from the State, the Contractor must process the data and create three uniformly formatted databases: State Inpatient Databases (SID), State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD), and State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD) following existing HCUP formats. HCUP nationwide databases are then created from the HCUP State databases by sampling hospitals across the participating States. Currently, two types of HCUP nationwide databases exist: The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and the Kids? Inpatient Database (KID). The NIS contains data on all discharges from about 1,000 hospitals located throughout the country, approximating a 20 percent stratified sample of community non-rehabilitation hospitals in the United States. The KID contains a sample of discharges from approximately 2,500 hospitals. The HCUP Contractor will be required to conduct the following activities: Manage the HCUP partnership?s data acquisition including recruiting new States into the project; requesting additional data types from existing HCUP State Partners; obtaining annual data files; and retaining Partner participation in the project. These activities require completing data applications and supporting materials, and assisting in negotiating Memorandums of Agreement for participation. Operate the HCUP Central Distributor, which handles all activities directly related to the sales and dissemination of the restricted access public release HCUP databases (the NIS, KID and a sub-set of the full State files used by AHRQ) and related HCUP files. These activities include: maintaining a tracking and distribution system: answering general inquires about HCUP databases and related products; reviewing and processing data purchase applications; collecting and reimbursing fees from sales to Partners as appropriate; and making copies of the HCUP databases and files and preparing database binders. Provide HCUP Partners with technical assistance on their collection and use of their statewide encounter data to improve the collection and use of inpatient and outpatient data. Topic areas include, but are not limited to, national standards for data elements in inpatient and outpatient encounter data, electronic transmission of encounter data, improved timeliness, edit checks and other data quality issues, adding clinical content and other analytically useful data elements to encounter data, and advances in health information technology that may lead to improvements in their data programs including the electronic healthcare record, Regional Health Information Organizations, and the National Health Information Network. Provide AHRQ staff with technical support including access and use of data and documentation system, general technological innovations affecting HCUP data processing, and advances in health care information technology (HIT) relevant to HCUP. Deliver user support by maintaining an infrastructure to provide technical support to outside users on HCUP databases, software tools, linkable files, written reports and all other products developed for the HCUP project. The objective of the assistance is to increase the usefulness and use of HCUP data and products, and of administrative data in general. Types of technical support to be provided include: explanations, applications and usage techniques of HCUP, its databases, software tools, linkable files, HCUPnet, and database and software documentation; answers to questions about appropriate use and reporting of data analyses; and procedures and requirements for acquiring HCUP databases and HCUP products. User support also involves presentations designed and delivered to targeted audiences to increase their knowledge about HCUP; developing and implementing dissemination strategies; developing software tools that enhance the value of HCUP data and other administrative data; and conducting special research and policy analyses and preparing reports and publications which may be either descriptive, analytic, or methodological. Maintain and further develop the HCUP Web site (HCUP-US) which serves as the project?s primary vehicle for public outreach, and a virtual repository for project information and documentation. HCUP data is not stored on the HCUP-US Web site, but with few exceptions, all documentation components are archived in this system. Support the generation of estimates derived from HCUP data for the Congressionally- mandated reports: National Healthcare Quality Reports (NHQR) and National Healthcare Disparities Reports (NHDR). The NHQR provides assessments of health care quality at the national and State levels and tracks improvement across a broad array of quality measures. The NHDR provides assessments of health care disparities related to racial and socioeconomic factors at the national level and within diverse priority populations and tracks the NHQR quality measures as well as an array of access measures. The key task involves applying the AHRQ Quality Indicators (QI) software to the HCUP national and State databases. The main products include QI estimates in tables, documentation of methods, special analyses, and coordination with HCUP Partners in the use and reporting of their State data. Sources must have an understanding of and experience in: maintaining and managing multiple, complex activities concurrently at the highest level of professional and scientific quality; managing subcontractors and consultants; building, managing, and analyzing a large administrative encounter-level database in direct support of health services research; developing systems for monitoring and maintaining secure and efficient computing environment (including programmer resources); processing inpatient and outpatient data; outpatient billing and CPT/HCPCS coding and inpatient billing and ICD-9 and ICD-10 coding; providing assistance on understanding and adoption of technological innovations that may affect different aspects of the project for the transmission and sharing of data such as the Electronic Health Record; applying national health care data standards; conducting complex programming in support of sample design and other statistical software; developing sample design and sampling weights to produce national or other such estimates; producing electronic documentation from large administrative encounter-level data for independent use by other organizations; recruiting data Partners, coordinating and negotiating with outside agencies for data purchase and collection, and providing technical assistance to data organizations; conducting special analyses, providing technical support and training in data collection and analysis; managing large health care electronic databases and Web sites; health policy, uses of administrative data; ability to write user-friendly, technically accurate reports. Source must possess, or be able to obtain (in-house or through subcontracting/consulting arrangements) the staff and other resources needed to expeditiously carry out the different types of activities listed. The Government encourages novel approaches to existing requirements, realizing cost savings, and obtaining alternative recommendations to enhance the Project?s success. Of particular interest is demonstrated flexibility in a rapidly evolving data environment that can carry the HCUP project forward in this next phase. Responses to this sources sought notice are neither mandatory nor a condition for eligibility to participate in any resulting formal Requests for Proposals or future acquisition. The Government will not provide comments to any Offeror?s submission. Interested businesses should submit their capability statements (approximately 10 pages in length to Sharon Williams, Contracting Officer, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Division of Contracts Management, 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD, 20850, no later than 4:00 p.m., eastern standard time, on December 7, 2005. Capability statements should be tailored to this request and identify the source?s capabilities to complete this requirement, including information on key staff experience and education, and a description of corporate experience with similar projects. Sources should indicate which tasks they will perform and which tasks they anticipate would be subcontracted out and what percentage of effort is anticipated to be performed in-house and what percentage would be subcontracted out. Capability statements should include the size classification relative to NAICS Code 541519 ($21 million). Capability statements should be submitted in an original and three (3) copies. Only paper copies will be accepted; no electronic or e-mail submissions will be accepted.
- Record
- SN00935426-W 20051123/051121211651 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
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