Graduate Medical Education Accreditation

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Clinical Center (CC); Office of Purchasing and Contracts (OPC), on behalf of the CC/OPC Office of Clinical Research Training and Medical Education (OCRTME) intends to solicit and negotiate on a sole source basis and award a contract for the administrative support and oversight of graduate medical education programs to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b) (1.) The NIH Clinical Center is the sponsoring institution at the NIH responsible for the administrative support and oversight of graduate medical education programs designed to train physicians, recruited through a competitive nation-wide search process, in a total of 18 nationally recognized medical/surgical specialties. These graduate medical education programs provide prescribed structured, standardized clinical and research training experiences to these physicians that permits their certification as specialists in a recognized medical or surgical field by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), a national organization that has established a process for verifying the competence of individual physicians in such recognized medical or surgical specialty fields. However, the prescribed standards and program structure required for the training for physicians in a given medical or surgical specialty field are developed and verified, both for training programs and institutions which sponsor those training programs, through a national process of accreditation established by another organization, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), located in Chicago, Illinois. The ACGME is a private, non-profit organization that accredits approximately 8,700 residency programs in 130 specialties or subspecialties that educate about 109,000 residents nationally. Its mission is to improve health care nationally by assessing and advancing the quality of resident physicians' education through an exemplary accreditation process. Graduate medical education training programs and those institutions that sponsor medical or surgical training programs in a recognized specialty field, such as the NIH Clinical Center, are expected to be accredited by the ACGME in order to permit training program graduates to be certified by the ABMS. It should be noted that those graduate medical education programs and sponsoring institutions that are not accredited by the ACGME are not recognized as providing the required training that permits physicians to be certified as medical or surgical specialists by the ABMS. Thus, physicians who complete specialty training in non-ACGME accredited programs, with rare exception, are not eligible for certification by the ABMS, and are not considered bona fide medical or surgical specialists by health care delivery organizations, medical schools, and academic medical centers throughout the United States. Finally, many states require completion of an ACGME-accredited training program before granting a license to practice medicine and surgery. Thus, accreditation of both individual graduate medical education programs, and the NIH Clinical Center as a sponsor of graduate medical education on the NIH campus, by the ACGME is essential for the NIH Clinical Center and the NIH to meet its mission of training highly competent (i.e., ABMS certified) and qualified physician-scientists and clinician-investigators in the recognized specialty fields of medicine or surgery. The ACGME is a private, non-profit organization that accredits approximately 8,700 residency programs in 130 specialties or subspecialties that educate about 109,000 residents nationally, and no other national accreditation institution satisfy agency requirements. This notice of intent to award is not a request for competitive quotations. Interested concerns capable of providing the same or similar products or services as described in this notice may submit a capability statement outlining their capabilities. No solicitation is available. Information received will be evaluated for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. Capability Statements must be received within the time set forth in this synopsis to be considered by the Government. A determination to compete this proposed contract based on responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.