SOURCES SOUGHT
B -- AHRQ Analyses, Investigations and Methodologies for Healthcare Quality Improvement (AIMHQI)
- Notice Date
- 4/10/2017
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541990
— All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Contracts Management, 5600 Fishers Lane, Mailstop: 06N34B, Rockville, Maryland, 20857, United States
- ZIP Code
- 20857
- Solicitation Number
- HHS-AHRQ-SBSS-17-10005
- Point of Contact
- Lisa Slavin, Phone: 3014271824
- E-Mail Address
-
Lisa.Slavin@ahrq.hhs.gov
(Lisa.Slavin@ahrq.hhs.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- This is a Small Business Sources Sought notice. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding: (1) the availability and capability of qualified small business sources; (2) whether they are small businesses; HUBZone small businesses; service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses; 8(a) small businesses; veteran owned small businesses; woman-owned small businesses; or small disadvantaged businesses; and (3) their size classification relative to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code of the proposed acquisition. Your responses to the information requested will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible. An organization that is not considered a small business under the applicable NAICS code should not submit a response to this notice. BACKGROUND: The mission of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used. To accompany this mission, AHRQ is focusing on the following priorities: Priority 1: Improve health care quality. Priority 2: Make health care safer. Priority 3: Increase accessibility. Priority 4: Improve health care affordability, efficiency and cost transparency. To achieve its mission, the Agency conducts and supports a broad base of scientific research and promotes improvements in clinical and health system practices, including the prevention of diseases and other health conditions. AHRQ sponsors and conducts research that develops and presents evidence-based information on healthcare outcomes, quality, comparative effectiveness, patient safety, cost, use, and access. Included in AHRQ's mandate is support of the generation, synthesis, and dissemination of scientific evidence, including effectiveness research and analytic methods. More specifically, AHRQ's role in supporting efforts in these areas has included research and analysis to understand, assess and improve the delivery, efficiency and quality of health care provided within the U.S. healthcare system. PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is seeking firms which have the capability to understand, develop, assess, and improve measures, tools and data within and across healthcare systems and markets to support improvements in the delivery, efficiency and quality of healthcare provided in the U.S. AHRQ is looking to procure the expertise, resources and capacities necessary to successfully undertake rapid-cycle research through expeditious competition and awards of task orders to a pre-competed set of highly qualified contractors. This Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) intends to include capacities that can support AHRQ's priority of improving the efficiency and quality of health care and care delivery and making health care safer by meeting the following objectives: • Innovative use of variety of complex data sources (e.g., billing/claims data, electronic health records, laboratory data) for quality improvement • Development, analysis and assessment of evidence-based quality improvement metrics created for use at the national and local levels • Development and implementation of quality improvement methodologies and tools for use by healthcare providers and health systems • Identification, analysis and assessment of quality improvement methodologies, metrics and tools which drive improvements in the quality of health care delivered The initiative to conduct this effort is titled Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Analyses, Investigations and Methodologies for Healthcare Quality Improvement (AIMHQI) Contract. Under this initiative, AHRQ intends to establish an infrastructure to support work which utilizes research and data to understand, analyze, develop and facilitate the use of evidence-based health care quality analyses, analytic tools and methods to better assess and improve the healthcare delivery, quality, and efficiency within and across health systems and markets. To achieve this, AHRQ will establish a Multiple Award Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quality (IDIQ) contract under which a set of pre-competed contracts will be awarded to organizations with combined expertise in healthcare quality improvement, complex statistical analyses, data manipulation, sophisticated statistical programming and clinical coding applied to healthcare delivery, quality, and efficiency within and across healthcare systems and markets. This mechanism would consist of task orders that cover a wide range of analytic and methodological activities including synthesizing evidence, experience and expert opinion, aggregation of data, generation of evidence, implementation of complex statistical analyses, and the creation and implementation of quality metrics and tools. PROJECT REQUIREMENTS: AHRQ is seeking qualified firms able to optimize their technical and management resources, creativity and flexibility to achieve Agency goals. Qualified firms must demonstrate substantial experience in conducting large scale, complex statistical and methodological analyses of complex datasets to understand, assess and improve healthcare systems and markets. Tasks will require contractors to manage and coordinate staff in support of methodological investigations and tool development across a broad range of content areas. Organizations that work at the national, state, regional, local, provider or system levels and who are engaged in developing, testing, and implementing complex evidence-based research, metrics, analytic tools and methods to understand, assess and facilitate the improvement of health care delivery, efficiency and quality are encouraged to participate in this offering. To achieve the goals and objectives stated above, successful firms shall have capacity and expertise to: • Obtain, catalog and store large complex databases in a data secure environment; • Conduct sophisticated statistical analyses using large complex databases (i.e., billing, claims data, electronic health records);) focused on improving healthcare quality within health care systems and markets • Conduct methodological investigations to assess, develop and support evidence-based measures of healthcare delivery, efficiency and quality to improve health care quality within health care systems and markets • Conduct methodological investigations to develop and support evidence-based tools to improve healthcare quality within healthcare systems and markets Examples of potential activities under this IDIQ include but are not limited to: • Convene technical expert panels on issues related to quality improvement, methodology, clinical coding systems and other health services research and clinical topics • Develop evidence-based tools for quality improvement within health systems and markets • Develop evidence-based e-measures for quality improvement within health systems and markets • Develop claims-based measures for quality improvement within health systems and markets • Conduct systematic evidence reviews • Develop written and oral communication with stakeholders unfamiliar with technical detail to facilitate use of quality improvement metrics, tools and research • Develop measure standards and data formats • Synthesize available evidence, experience, and expert opinion on quality improvement measurement and implementation. Minimum qualifications include: • Project leadership with advanced degrees such as an MD, PhD or MPH with a minimum of 10 years' experience and knowledge of the health care systems and markets • Project leadership with advanced degrees such as an MD, PhD or MPH with a minimum of 10 years' experience in the conceptualization and implementation of complex health services analyses, assessments and evaluations for healthcare quality improvement. • Project leadership with advanced degrees such as an MD, PhD or MPH with a minimum of 10 years' experience in the development, implementation, dissemination and sustainability of evidence-based quality metrics and tools. Project team experience with in-depth understanding of coding systems (e.g., ICD-10-CM/PCS, SNOMED, LOINC, CPT/HCPCS) and how to access information from a variety of data sources • Corporate infrastructure to support secure data environment to access and /or store data and information systems which meet federal data security regulations • Corporate experience and demonstrated evidence of a minimum of 10 years of experience in health services research • Corporate experience in sophisticated statistical and methodological analyses, (e.g. complex risk adjustment, smoothing, and composite weighting) citing a minimum of 10-15 projects over the past 10 years with evidence of knowledge, experience and infrastructure to support large scale complex analyses with complex health data. • Corporate experience in obtaining and storing large data sets in a secure environment and able to meet all federal security standards citing a minimum of 8-10 projects over the past 10 years with evidence of such activities. • Corporate experience in developing methodologies for quality metrics citing a minimum of 8-10 projects over the past 10 years with evidence of knowledge, experience and infrastructure to support health care quality measurement related activities (development, validation, testing etc.). • Corporate experience in developing and testing evidence-based tools for use quality improvement activities • Capacity to concurrently conduct 5-10 complex analyses using large datasets • Capacity to support ad hoc analyses in 1-3 days • Corporate experience and expertise in successfully managing projects that use diverse methods, approaches, vehicles and strategies to maximize the meaningful spread and uptake of quality improvement metrics and tools • Corporate experience and expertise in field-based delivery system research • Flexibility and ability to expeditiously respond to emergent or otherwise unanticipated needs for specialized skills or additional expertise, staffing or other resources • Corporate experience and expertise in successfully completing federal contracts Sources 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 above. ANTICIPATED PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE: The anticipated period of performance for this IDIQ is a five year ordering period. INFORMATION SOUGHT: The tailored response to this Small Business Sources Sought notice should describe the requested information below. Respondents must provide, as part of their response, information concerning: a) Staff expertise, including their availability, experience, and formal and other training; b) Current in-house capability and capability to perform the work; c) Corporate experience and management capability; and d) Prior completed projects of similar nature; e) Examples of prior completed Government contracts, references, and other related information. Respondents must describe their capacity and experience as it relates to the project requirements described above. INFORMATION SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: Interested qualified small business organizations should submit a tailored capability statement for this requirement. Generic capability statements will be considered non-responsive. Capability statements must be tailored to this request. The cover page must include the following: • DUNS number • Organization name • Organization address • Size and type of business (e.g., 8(a), HUBZone, etc) pursuant to NAICS code 541990. • Technical point(s) of contact, including names, titles, addresses, telephone, and e-mail addresses. All Capability Statements sent in response to this SMALL BUSINESS SOURCES SOUGHT notice must be submitted electronically (via e-mail) to Lisa Slavin, Contract Specialist, Lisa.Slavin@ahrq.hhs.gov in MS Word, or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), no later than 10:00 AM on April, 25, 2017. Responses should not exceed 10 single-sided pages (including the cover page, all attachments, resumes, charts, etc.) presented in single-space and using a 12-point font size minimum, that clearly details the ability to perform the aspects of the notice described above. DISCLAIMER AND IMPORTANT NOTES: This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed. Information provided will be used to assess tradeoffs and alternatives available for the potential requirement and may lead to the development of a solicitation. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. Any solicitation resulting from the analysis of information obtained will be announced to the public in Federal Business Opportunities in accordance with the FAR Part 5. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation. CONFIDENTIALITY: No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).
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- Record
- SN04466576-W 20170412/170411000225-e4686a6d908335dfce4a57c7306f276e (fbodaily.com)
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