DHHS/PSC/AOS/DAM/ADP Acquisitions, 5600 Fishers Lane; Room 5-95, Rockville MD 20857

D -- DATA TRANSMISSION SERVICES IN SUPPORT OF THE NATIONAL PRACTITIONER DATA BANK SOL 213-97-0003 POC Jan Leahey, Contracting Officer; 301/443-0706 The Program Support Center, Division of Acquisition Management has a requirement to acquire high-speed, secure, data telecommunications network transmission services, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; store-and-forward capabilities for large volumes of data; and file-transfer, data communications software in support of the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) and NPDB clients nationwide. The NPDB is a nationwide data collection program that provides a resource to assist State Licensing boards, hospitals and other health care entities in conducting extensive independent investigations of the qualifications of health care practitioners they seek to license, hire or grant clinical privilege. The Systems Research and Applications (SRA) Corporation currently operates and maintains the NPDB under a separate contract for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)/Division of Quality Assurance (DQA). Since 1992, HRSA has contracted with CompuServe Incorporated to (1) provide a data communications network by which 95% of NPDB clients could dial into via local access nodes and not incur long distance charges, (2) provide computers with the capacity to store data until delivery to the NPDB, and (3) provide a communications software package that could be incorporated seamlessly into the NPDB client application software package called QPRAC. CompuServe has provided their secure store-and-forward proprietary Infoplex service; TMAIL, their proprietary communications software-package, was incorporated seamlessly into QPRAC; and isolated space on their mainframe computers in Columbus, Ohio has been provided to store data. TMAIL was replaced by WINTMAIL in QPRAC version 3.0. CompuServe has announced its intention to drop support of both Infoplex and WINTMAIL within a limited period. The Government is soliciting, on a full and open basis, for a service provider that has an off-the-shelf solution to replace CompuServe's WINTMAIL, replace the secure store-and-forward Infoplex service, and to provide high-speed, secure, data telecommunications network transmission services. The Government does not propose to award a contract that includes software development; only off-the-shelf solutions shall be considered. The anticipated period of performance is a one-year base period plus two one-year option periods. The solicitation will be available for release approximately fifteen (15) days from publication of this notice. Requests for the solicitation shall be directed to the attention of Jan Leahey citing RFP No: 213-97-0003 at the above referenced address, or via facsimile, 301/443-8488. (0105)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0035 19970417\D-0005.SOL)