D--Interactive Voice Response National - IDIQ

This is a pre-solicitation notice and is intended to gather interest in the VHA's upcoming solicitation for a Veterans Health Library. The Department of Veterans Affairs Program Contracting Activity, Central (PCAC) intends to solicit, a firm fix price contract to procure services to provide to implement a Veterans Health Library. The solicitation will be made available on the Federal Business Opportunities web page as a "Request for Proposal" (RFP) attached to solicitation number VA-701-10-RP-0116. The procurement will be conducted in accordance with FAR Parts 15 and be evaluated with the procedures therein. The solicitation will be issued on or about August 2th, 2010 and proposals will be due on or about August 23rd, 2010. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is seeking to implement an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System that can provide disease management protocols to support clinical care to Veteran patient populations receiving care from VHA's Care Coordination Home Telehealth program (CCHT) in all Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs). The IVR technology VHA requires will enable automated interactions to help manage the provision of services to Veteran patients and data feeds of disease management data to VHA care coordinators who provide CCHT services. The requirements of this technology include a need for it to allow Veteran patients to retrieve clinical information using IVR from any telephone system. In addition its solution will provide for the ability to reach CCHT Veteran patients during an emergency or disaster situation. VHA Care Coordination Home Telehealth Program (CCHT) currently supports the care of 43,000 Veteran patients in their own homes using home telehealth technology. The range of conditions covered by this program includes: " Non institutional care " Chronic care management " Acute Care Management " Health Promotion/Disease Prevention VA has introduced home telehealth technologies with the purpose of making care available, whenever possible in the Veteran patient's home and local community. VA is committed to increasing non-institutional care provision utilizing CCHT to 50,000 Veteran patients by the end of FY2010. The acquisition of an IVR system that supports disease management protocols will fulfill an urgent business need to expand care for chronic care management in a manner that is not restricted to having a home telehealth hub device and the solution will enable Veteran patients with literacy issues, visual problems and lack of a telecommunications landline to receive care that is otherwise problematic with current technologies. VA's purpose in undertaking this solicitation is to secure an ongoing supply of technologies and associated products/services to support VA's enterprise-wide Care Coordination/Home Telehealth (CCHT) Programs. The business and clinical requirements for such products that VA identifies within the upcoming solicitation to support CCHT are indentified for procurement within VA by Office of Telehealth Services (OTS) in VA's Office of Patient Care Services. The support within VA to interface the products that VA identifies within this solicitation and the associated technical specifications, data definitions and performance requirements that contractors products must meet from an information technologies standpoint have been determined by VA's Office of Information & Technology (OI&T). Within VA these CCHT technology products are usually purchased and distributed through VA's Prosthetics and Sensory Aids Services located at individual VA Medical facilities. The objectives of the upcoming solicitation will be to ensure the availability of a consistent supply of CCHT technology products within VA for use nationwide in caring for Veteran patients with chronic health-related conditions and in doing so to obtain volume-based pricing. The CCHT technology requirements that this procurement seeks to fulfill is for chronic disease management protocols, patient monitoring, patient education and data acquisition that VA requires in support of routine clinical practice involving telehealth interactions between VA clinicians and Veteran patients (in their homes and/or community settings in which they receive CCHT-based care). VA envisages obtaining IVR products that require a General Service fee monthly per actively enrolled patient that covers the totality of the costs associated with adding a 3rd party IVR system into VA's standard CCHT care delivery model. All items that are specified by VA in the upcoming solicitation must be commercially available as telehealth/disease management products. With respect to care support in the home VA seeks contractors to provide IVR with the requisite data management, support services and information technology services necessary to provide a comprehensive range of CCHT services. The IVR services will act as a data access and communication platform that links Veteran patients receiving CCHT-based care with VA clinicians. These services must support and enable bi-directional transfer of prescribed data, as outlined in this solicitation, from Veteran patients to VA and vice versa. Such Veteran patients will have been assessed by VA clinicians as appropriate to be managed via CCHT in this way. All patient data will be communicated to VA data systems and VA clinicians by way of secure vendor servers (primary and back-up) situated within the VA. All contractors for all home telehealth technologies will be required to place suitable data systems behind the VA firewall. All vendor supplied systems and any associated sub-systems that link into these vendor servers must meet VA specified standards for data exchange, specified metrics of quality/timeliness and fully comply with all necessary VA privacy/cyber security requirements. This is a pre-solicitation notice and is intended to gather interest in the upcoming solicitation. All questions directed to relating to the pre-solicitation notice should be submitted in writing to the PCAC Contracting Specialist, Jonathan Jewel, contact@example.gov, by e-mail only.