B -- Evaluation of Medicare Part D Organizations' Customer Service Call Centers and Pharmacy Call Center Contractor

THIS IS NOT A FORMAL REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) AND DOES NOT COMMIT THE CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES (CMS) TO AWARD A CONTRACT NOW OR IN THE FUTURE. Evaluation of Medicare Part D Organizations Customer Service Call Centers and Pharmacy Call Center Contractor INTRODUCTION This announcement constitutes a Sources Sought Synopsis in support of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Center for Beneficiary Choices (CBC). CMS is seeking capability statements from small business firms (e.g., 8(a), service-disabled veteran owned small business, HUBZone small business, small disadvantaged business, veteran-owned small business, and women-owned small business) that are qualified to support CMS in evaluating Medicare Part D prescription drug plan contractors? availability and responsiveness to their enrollees and contracted pharmacy providers in providing requested information over the telephone. Offerors should note that this is not primarily an Information Technology (IT) action. IT tasks and requirements performed under this SOW are incidental. The primary focus of this call center evaluation is on: (1) designing a statistical/scientific approach for sampling Part D Sponsors? beneficiary and pharmacy call centers within a CMS defined accuracy level (calculation of average hold time with an error margin of ?10 seconds); (2) utilizing live telephone interviewers with computer assisted telephone interface systems to make survey calls to beneficiary and pharmacy call centers to determine hold time and disconnection rates; and (3) providing reports and research datasets to CMS based on data collected from surveillance calls. The Medicare prescription drug benefit, which started January 1, 2006, is provided by stand-alone Medicare Prescription Drug Plans (PDPs) that have contracted with CMS to provide only Part D benefits and by Medicare Advantage plans (MA-PDs) which offer combined Medicare Part A/B benefits along with Part D prescription drug benefits. The organizations that provide Part D benefits are required to meet certain standards for providing information to their enrollees and contracted providers. An integral part of these requirements is that each organization be responsive when enrollees and providers call on the telephone for information. Providing timely information is often critical for doctors and pharmacists to help provide Part D enrollees with the prescriptions they need. In the 2007 contract year, there are currently a total of 552 stand-alone Prescription Drug Plan and Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug plan contracts being surveyed by CMS and these contracts operate a total of 414 beneficiary phone lines and 171 pharmacy help lines. TASK DESCRIPTION Tasks under this contract will focus primarily on developing a surveillance research protocol, making survey calls to Part D sponsors? beneficiary and pharmacy call centers, and providing reports and data files to CMS based on the findings. More specifically, offerors will be required to demonstrate that they have extensive and successful experience in providing a full-range of key activities conducting health services research using statistical sampling and operating/managing an outbound call center. These tasks include: A. Study Protocol for Call Center Surveillance: The contractor shall develop a written research protocol which describes their process for completing calls to Part D sponsors? beneficiary call centers and pharmacy technical support call centers, including when various timestamps will occur during a call to determine the call hold time. Note: this must include protocols for navigating lines which utilize interactive voice recognition (IVR) or other automated answering systems. The contractor shall also determine the number of calls required to be placed to each Part D sponsor?s beneficiary call center and to their pharmacy technical support call center on a weekly basis to ensure an accuracy level for calculation of average hold time with an error margin of ?10 seconds, accounting for the number of beneficiaries enrolled in plans offered by the sponsor. CMS estimates that during survey weeks, the total number of calls should be approximately 7,500 to 10,000 per week for the beneficiary lines and 4,000 to 6,000 per week for the pharmacy lines. B. Pilot Survey of Call Centers: The contractor shall conduct a 1-week pilot survey of Part D sponsors? beneficiary call centers and their pharmacy technical support call centers using their CMS approved protocol. At the discretion of CMS, a second pilot week may be required based on findings from the first week pilot. C. Analysis of Call Center Pilot Survey Data: The contractor shall provide a report to CMS which includes an analysis of all data obtained from the call center pilot survey and shall also supply CMS with call-level raw data files from the pilot survey upon request. Additionally, the contractor shall compare pilot survey findings to Part D sponsors? actual call data, both at the summary level and individual call level. D. Survey of Call Centers: Once revisions are made to the research protocol following input from the pilot survey and CMS provides final approval, the contractor shall begin surveying Part D sponsors? beneficiary call centers and their pharmacy technical support call centers. The contractor will complete the proposed number of calls to every Part D organization?s customer service line and pharmacy help line over the course of a one-week period (5 business days) as specified in their CMS approved protocol. The contractor will repeat this same calling process for all Part D organizations, but with the Part D organizations re-ordered in the call schedule to ensure that the same organizations are not called on the same days / times as the prior week. The contractor will continue this process for a minimum of 4 weeks per calendar quarter (specific weeks to be surveyed each quarter will be specified by CMS) and at additional times as specified by CMS, until the end of the contract period. E. Analysis of Weekly Call Center Survey Data: For each organization called, the contractor shall report on the results of the inquiries. The call center contract summary reports shall include current week, quarter-to-date, and year-to-date statistics for each contract?s beneficiary call center and pharmacy call center. These reports shall contain the organization contract number, organization name, range of call dates, Part D sponsor type (e.g. PDP or MA-PD, or code to represent), Call center type (beneficiary or pharmacy), total number of call made to the organization, number of successful calls, number of unsuccessful calls, average IVR time, average hold time, minimum time to answer, median time to answer, maximum time to answer, percent of disconnected calls, percent of calls with a hold time of 30 seconds or less, and other information relevant to assessing performance as specified by CMS. In addition, a second report shall be provided that describes for each contract the reasons for unsuccessful calls, and the count of calls associated with each of these reasons for the current survey week. F. Call Center Call-Level Datasets: The contractor will supply CMS with an electronic file in SAS dataset file format (.sas7bdat) containing the call level data for each of the calls that were dialed to each organization?s beneficiary call centers and pharmacy technical support call centers for each week of call surveillance. REQUIRED DEMONSTRATED KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE PLEASE NOTE: Any potential offeror must indicate ability to provide the following: 1. Knowledge of Medicare Part D customer service call center operation and evaluation. 2. Experience in the management and direction of an outbound call center for data collection. 3. Experience in conducting qualitative and quantitative formative research, which includes but is not limited to deriving representative sampling approaches that would estimate Part D sponsors? call center performance statistics. 4. Demonstrated experience in preparing technical and analytical reports including, but not limited to meeting minutes, summary reports, presentation slides, data sets detailing high volumes of call survey observations (Please refer to Task A for call volumes.) 5. Demonstrated experience distributed among the personnel in accordance with their responsibilities for particular tasks: a. Must provide both sufficient personnel and appropriately skilled telephone interviewers to conduct the proposed number of survey calls. (Please refer to Task A for call volumes.) b. Senior analyst must be experienced in collecting and analyzing call center data using statistical methods. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REQUESTED 1) The following specific information is requested: (a) company descriptive literature; (b) specific related corporate experience directly related to our requirements; (c) experience with broad range of conducting qualitative and quantitative formative research; (d) expertise in the collection and analysis of call center performance data; and (e) references (to include a point of contact and phone number) with first hand knowledge of the experience cited in (b), (c), and (d) above. If applicable, indicate if your company is on a GSA schedule or holds a Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) relevant to the capabilities addressed in your response. It is essential that the contractor be free of all perceive, potential or actual conflicts. Specifically, the contractor must not have any relationships or arrangements through its business operations or its employees that could be considered as possibly lessening the company?s objectivity concerning any aspect of this work. If such relationships or arrangements exist, contractors shall be required, during the procurement process, to identify potential conflicts of interest and discuss how the conflicts will be addressed and mitigated. Specify the name and telephone number of a point of contact and indicate your size standard under the following North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) (formerly known as the SIC code): 541518 ? (Size Standard: $6.5 million). Additional information on NAICS codes can be found at www.sba.gov. The synopsis is for information and planning purposes and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government. This is not a solicitation announcement for proposals and no contract will be awarded from this announcement. No reimbursement will be made for any costs associated with providing information in response to this announcement and any follow-up information requests. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation. All information submitted in response to this announcement must arrive on or before the closing date. Small and minority businesses interested in documenting their capability to perform in the functional areas above should respond to this sources sought announcement as soon as possible, but no later than June 29, 2007. Responses shall be limited to ten (10) pages and no more than ten (10) pages of attachments. Documentation should be sent to: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Attn: Noel Manlove, Contract Specialist Office of Acquisitions and Grants Management Acquisitions and Grants Group Division of Beneficiary Support Contracts Mailstop: C2-21-15 7500 Security Boulevard Baltimore, MD 21244 Questions may be referred to Noel Manlove at 410-786-5161. Point of Contact Noel Manlove, Contract Specialist, Phone 410-786-5161, Fax 410-786-9088, Email noel.manlove@cms.hhs.gov