SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- Clinical Contact Center Modernization (CCCM)
- Notice Date
- 5/9/2019
- Notice Type
- Synopsis
- NAICS
- 541618
— Other Management Consulting Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Veterans Affairs;Program Contracting Activity Central;6150 Oak Tree Blvd, Suite 300;Independence OH 44131
- ZIP Code
- 44131
- Solicitation Number
- 36C77619Q0123
- Response Due
- 5/28/2019
- Archive Date
- 9/4/2019
- Point of Contact
- Kymberly.Morgan@va.gov
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- REQUEST FOR INFORMATION DEPARTMENT OF VETERAN AFFAIRS Description 1.1 The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in support of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is seeking information from interested contractors to provide continued assistance in the modernization of the clinical contact center (CCC) and virtual care delivery environment. 1.2 THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes it does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future. This request for information does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, the VA is not at this time seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. Respondees are advised that the U.S. Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this RFI; all costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party s expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) website. It is the responsibility of the potential offerors to monitor this site for additional information pertaining to this requirement. Background 2.1 Timely access to healthcare is fundamental to a Veteran s positive perception of the organization and in VA Medical Centers (VAMCs), Community-Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs), and Outpatient Clinics (OPCs) and is typically gained via an initial, and in many cases, subsequent telephone exchanges. As a result, Veterans Affairs (VA) has created focus on improving both the Veterans and the Employees experience, with specific focus on enhancing the experience over the phone and via other means such as text, instant messaging and other virtual care modalities to obtain Veterans Health Administration (VHA) services. VHA currently adopts the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission (URAC) timeliness measures of answering calls, within 30 seconds with a 5 percent or less call abandonment rate (caller hang-up rate prior to the phone being answered). Thus, VHA requires a high portion of calls be resolved the first time thereby achieving clinically meaningful first contact resolution (FCR). Over the last several years VHA has conducted several studies and analyses for the purposes of understanding the present environment not only within VHA but among leading commercial healthcare practices. Among many objectives and goals set during this work VHA has supported the identification and implementation of highly-successful VHA and/or commercial healthcare business models, processes and practices. These efforts included a comprehensive assessment of current VHA operating models as well as models currently being implemented within industry-leading commercial healthcare enterprises for the purposes of modeling their implementation across VHA. As a result, and during 2016, VHA chose to implement dedicated call centers supporting primary care scheduling; daytime nurse triage, pharmacy and telephone operator services. Over the course of 2016, VHA was able to build-out nearly 100 clinical call centers designed to provide not only a dedicated call center service but to provide the basis for FCR. Moving into 2018 and now 2019, VHA s focus has become the integration of clinical practice and expanded virtual care capabilities within these foundational call centers. Additionally, many Veteran Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) has begun the difficult work of consolidating the disparate VAMC-based call center resources at the VISN level such as to gain economies of scale and to provide for the flexibility to have any VA employee serve any Veteran with the VISN, no matter where the employee performs their duties. The integration of additional clinical capabilities, such as video capabilities and web-chat along with Licensed Independent Practioners (LIPs) such as Nurse Practioners (NP) along with the requisite telephony-technology has now created a force multiplier within those VISNs and/or VAMC where these capabilities have been deployed while truly allowing for the realization of FCR. It is at this crucial moment where VHA is now truly moving to adopt virtual care capabilities into the dedicated call center environment. With the addition of multiple integrated contact modalities such as web chat, the call center (telephone only) is now becoming a modern day contact center capable of multiple contact avenues for the Veteran to access clinical care and services. The nexus of contact center technology, integrated telephony systems capable of on net transfers among multiple facilities across the enterprise and the clinical care capabilities along with LIPs is now providing for VHA s next big leap forward in providing timely, efficient and effective services and virtual clinical care. These collective activities, among many other related efforts, constitutes clinical contact center modernization (CCCM). Scope of Work 3.1 The Contractor shall provide direct support to VHA for the purposes of improving communications and business relationships, building and deploying executable plans, policies and processes along with supporting the development of the administrative, clinical and technological standards used within and support of the clinical contact center (CCC) environment. These activities will include but will not be limited to: Licensed Independent Provider (LIP) integration; the deployment support of any number of virtual care applications and advanced clinical care modalities into the CCC environment; advancing relationship development and communications support to the CCC Community of Practice (CoP) with VHA partners such as Community Care; and supporting all manner of efforts designed to optimize VHA s transition to the Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) and scheduling systems. In doing so, the Contractor will rely heavily on their organic subject matter expertise (SME) and knowledge of leading commercial practice to utilize and build upon prior VHA efforts. The Contractor shall support a focused effort to assist leadership in markedly improving access to care and services via the CCC, along with consultation resulting in improved opportunities to address alternative contact modalities within VA s contact management environment. The objective is to transform VHA s contact management at the VISN, VAMC, and CBOC levels from an improvement system of limited national-level impact to a robust and comprehensive process improvement system that embraces an iterative approach. 3.2 GOVERNANCE SUPPORT: The Contractor s support to program governance will first and foremost be rooted in their subject matter expertise of CCCM activities. The overarching governing body for CCCM in the Clinical Contact Center Governance Board (CCCGB) made up of senior clinical program leads from such offices as Primary Care, Connected Care, access to care and Mental Health, the Office of Information Technology and Veterans Experience Office in addition to clinical leads for CCCM from within each VISN. The primary purpose of the CCCGB is to bring together all those responsible, in part, for the implementation of contact center and virtual care modalities throughout VHA such as to discuss and goal set around CCCM. The CCCGB meets face-to-face twice annually and is also supported by monthly update calls, along with individual monthly calls with each VISN to provide direct, focused support to their CCCM activities. Key activities designed support governance will include the development of enterprise guidelines surrounding: performance metrics, quality assurance, data analytics and reporting. Developing agendas, facilitating meetings, leveraging subject matter expertise as part of CCC integration discussions. Additionally, the Contractor will support activities designed to modernize existing triage algorithms. These activities will include the development and documentation of change management activities supporting a change control board (CCB). The Contractor will also support change requests to activities for enterprise triage algorithms relied upon by the CCCs in addition to providing administrative support to IPTs managing algorithm databases, setting meeting agendas, and facilitating meetings. Q1. Describe your firms demonstrated experience with and understanding of CCC modernization activities. Provide, at a minimum three (3) and a maximum of five (5) instances of critical contact center and virtual critical care evolution currently effecting today s CCC environment. Q2. Based on the responses to Q1, provide a description of where your firm has supported the evolution and deployment of CCC modernization activities in VA or within other leading commercial healthcare practice. 3.3 INTEGRATION AND COORDINATION OF CLINICAL CONTACT CENTERS WITH COMMUNITY CARE AND VIRTUAL CARE: As CCCM proceeds to support the modernization of virtual care integration, it will be critical that these activities are highly coordinated with supported and supporting clinical care and care coordination activities such as Community Care and those virtual care initiatives pursued by other VHA-level clinical program offices. In doing so, the Contractor will support with integrating VHA coordination of care into the clinical contact centers by creating and facilitating outreach and communications with VA coordination of care stakeholders which include but are not limited to: Community Care; primary care; mental health and specialty care, etc. The Contractor will guide activities for CCC integration discussions with both care coordination and Community Care to include setting agenda, facilitating meetings, capturing meeting minutes, and leveraging subject matter expertise as part of CCC integration discussions, developing CCC strategic plan to include the capture of data related to type of resources and where they are located. In the performance of activities, the Contractor will perform bi-weekly updates with the program leads to include discussions supporting the implementation of new communications modalities such as web chat and video along with the related data and measurements needed to ascertain value and impact. The Contractor will also examine the integration of CCC with Clinical resource hubs as part of the strategic plan The Contractor will also examine the integration of CCC with Clinical resource hubs as part of the strategic plan and will create expanded data analytics and reporting for LIP progress while maintaining a Licensed Independent Practitioner (LIP) Roadmap and Toolkit within the CCC strategic plan. The Contractor will ensure inclusion of input from other stakeholder organizations who are part of CCCM such as Connected Care and Primary Care, including other ongoing efforts, but not limited to related to Clinical resource hubs, Tele-Emergency Medicine, and pilot activities such as CirrusMD as they seek to integrate with the CCC operations. Q3. Describe your firms demonstrated experience with and understanding of the nexus between CCC modernization and related, supporting and/or supported virtual clinical deployment-pilot activities currently underway in VHA. Provide at a minimum three (3) and a maximum of five (5) instances of the critical intersection between CCCs and the future state practice of virtual clinical care in VHA. Q4. Based on the responses to Q3, provide a description of where your firm has supported the evolution and deployment of virtual care modalities into a CCC environment in VA or within other leading commercial healthcare practice. 3.4 LIP AND PROVIDER EXPANSION AND IMPLEMENTATION WITHIN CLINICAL CONTACT CENTERS: The critical element of CCCM, among all others, is the expansion of clinical care resources, capabilities and tools necessary to achieve clinically-meaningful FCR. This expansion is at the heart of CCCM and it as the core of everything envisioned for CCCs. The Contractor will leverage their inherent SME within the CCC environment to support the establishment of a LIP and provider CoP and IPT as to establish the CCC as the preeminent resource across VHA for CCC LIP and provider integration efforts. This includes supporting full practice authority (FPA) and scope of practice (SOP) discussions as VISNs and VAMCs integrate LIPs and providers into the CCC environment. Q5. Describe your firms demonstrated experience with and understanding of those CCC resource constraints (business, technological, clinical) and their current impacts on VHA s ability to efficiently and effectively deliver care in a virtual environment and in achieving clinically meaningful first call resolution (FCR). Provide at a minimum three (3) and a maximum of five (5) instances of existing resource constraints in the CCC environment (at least 1 per category: business, technological and clinical) and an explanation of their impact on the CCC environment. Q6. Based on the responses to Q5, provide a description of where your firm has supported the evolution and deployment of standardized solutions designed specifically to address resource shortfalls in the VHA CCC environment. Your responses should correspond directly with examples provided in response to Q5. 3.5 EHRM INTEGRATION WITH CLINICAL CONTACT CENTERS: As VA advances towards the modernization of its electronic healthcare record (EHR), it is critical that these changes are considered in the context of the CCC environment. Although at the early stages EHR deployment, the essential activities needed to ensure full integration into the CCC are needed now. In support of EHR modernization the Contractor shall support the integration of HER into the CCCs, in addition to the new scheduling system, such as to ensure all requirements are met, to include the development of strategies designed to elicit efficiencies and to establish standards for the use of the EHR and scheduling systems within the CCC and their use of video capabilities along with support to and with the clinical resource hubs. Q7. Describe your firms demonstrated experience with integrating a new EHR into an existing CCC environment. In line with this demonstrated experience, provide at a minimum three (3) and a maximum of five (5) specific areas of concern your firm successfully addressed as a part of your integration activities. 3.5 EXPERIENCE: As a critical component of this activity, it will be essential that the firm have intimate working knowledge of the existing VHA CCC and virtual care environments. This knowledge must include a detailed understanding of the recent evolution in practice and thought in VHA CCC operations (last 5 years) as well as intimate knowledge of the existing and future plans supporting virtual clinical care delivery. The Contractor must have demonstrated experience in supporting the evolution of VHA and leading commercial healthcare virtual care delivery, the modernization of contact center technology-telephony systems as well as the development and deployment of organizational capabilities designed to drive economies of scale in the VHA CCC environment. Q8. Describe your firms demonstrated experience and understanding of CCC modernization and virtual care delivery over the last 3 years. This experience and understanding should be a product of the firm s hands-on experience in supporting these activities within VHA. Provide, at a minimum three (3) and a maximum of five (5) instances of your firm s experience in enterprise-level VHA CCC and virtual care delivery modernization within the past 3 years. These activities should include examples in both domains, CCC and virtual care delivery. Responses 4.1 All potential sources are invited to submit, in writing, a capability statement with sufficient information to substantiate your business is reasonably capable of performing the work. The capability statement must clearly demonstrate a business s ability to fulfill the requirement. The burden of proof rests with the contractor; therefore, written responses must provide clear and unambiguous evidence to substantiate capabilities appropriate to satisfy this need. 4.2 Responses shall be in Microsoft Word compatible format and are due no later than 10:00 AM EST May 28, 2019. Responses shall be limited to 20 pages, 12-point font minimum. Please be advised that all submissions become Government property and will not be returned. Responses shall be sent to Kymberly Morgan at Kymberly.Morgan@va.gov. Questions or comments regarding the RFI are due no later than 10:00 AM EST May 17, 2019. 4.3. Responses shall provide administrative information, and shall include the following as a minimum: Company Name, DUNs number, Company mailing address, phone number, name of designated point of contact and e-mail of designated point of contact. Recommended contracting strategy. Specifically, propose from the industry s perspective what the most appropriate contract type is for this acquisition as well as what you believe the appropriate North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) should be used for this procurement based on the scope identified above. Either 1) copies of executed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with the contractors supporting VA and VA-supported PEOs in technical evaluations or 2) a statement that the respondee will not allow the Government to release its proprietary data to the Government support contractors. In the absence of either of the foregoing, the Government will assume that the respondee does NOT agree to the release of its submission to Government support contractors. Company business size and status (i.e., Large Business, Small Business, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Women-Owned Small Business, etc.), the number of years in business, affiliate information: parent company, joint venture partners, potential teaming partners. Responses to Questions 1 - 8. 5.0 Industry Discussions VA representatives may or may not choose to meet with potential offerors. Such discussions would only be for market research purposes and the intent would be to obtain further clarification of potential capability to meet the requirements, especially any development and certification risks. 6.0 Summary THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY to identify sources that can provide direct, SME-based, support to CCC and virtual care delivery modernization within VHA. The information provided in the RFI is subject to change and is not binding on the Government. The VA has not made a commitment to procure any of the items discussed, and release of this RFI should not be construed as such a commitment or as authorization to incur cost for which reimbursement would be required or sought. All submissions become Government property and will not be returned. NOTE: THIS NOTICE WAS NOT POSTED TO FEDBIZOPPS ON THE DATE INDICATED IN THE NOTICE ITSELF (09-MAY-2019); HOWEVER, IT DID APPEAR IN THE FEDBIZOPPS FTP FEED ON THIS DATE. PLEASE CONTACT 877-472-3779 or fbo.support@gsa.gov REGARDING THIS ISSUE.
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Link To Document
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/VA/ISC/OISC/36C77619Q0123/listing.html)
- Record
- SN05306541-F 20190511/190509230017 (fbodaily.com)
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FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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