Participation Agreement for The eHealth Exchange

The Social Security Administration (SSA) intends to negotiate solely with Healtheway, Inc., located at: 8300 Boone Blvd. Suite 500, Vienna VA 22182-2681 for the required participation agreement with Healtheway for the eHealth exchange and the CareQuality program. The work is required for SSA Headquarters located at 6401 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, Maryland. This requirement falls under Statutory Authority 41 U.S.C. - 1901(a), as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 13.5 - "Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items." The Contractor shall furnish all necessary management, staff, supplies, and infrastructure and shall manage, plan, schedule, coordinate and assure effective performance of all services. The Contractor shall provide the following: 1 Maintenance of the eHealth Exchange Data Use and Reciprocal Support Agreement (DURSA) 2 Maintenance of the eHealth Exchange operating policies and procedures (OPPs) 3 eHealth Exchange DURSA Administration (e.g. outage notices, breach notification, dispute resolution, issue resolution, change management, etc.) 4 Program Management (e.g. onboarding and testing process) 5 Facilitation and support of both the eHealth Exchange Coordinating Committee Facilitation and support of workgroups 6 Administration, maintenance and support of the shared Infrastructure (e.g. eHealth Exchange certificate authority, eHealth Exchange service registry) a) Includes ongoing support for the service registry for federal partners throughout migration to FHIR directory services 7 Facilitation and support of ongoing maintenance of the eHealth Exchange technical specifications, validation plan and limited specification maintenance 8 Baseline eHealth Exchange content testing 9 Enhanced Services for eHealth Exchange Network to include: a) Production Security Testing b) Perform periodic security tests against participant production and validation systems as per Operating Policy and Procedures c) FHIR Provider Directory d) Enhanced content testing to support SSA-specific requirements e) Augment the content testing program to improve the implementations and specificity of the HL7 C-CDA document types to offset the burden to the SSA. f) Enhanced content testing to support SSA-specific requirements to include: i) augment the content testing program to improve the implementations and specificity of the HL7 C-CDA document types to offset the burden to the SSA. ii) define an initial set of semantic tests or best practices to address SSA-specific needs (e.g. required fields) Augment checks for data completeness as required to meet SSA-specific needs (e.g. required fields), iii) initial set of content best practices in support of SSA's program, plus ongoing maintenance - defects and bugs, iv) surveillance monitoring and quality checks with eHealth Exchange validated vendors and continued enhancements, including testing of both transport and content. Access to CareQuality bridging through eHealth Exchange includes: 1 Expand connectivity to include CareQuality a) Include fees and additional support to coordinate testing with implementers, new certs, and directory entries. This does not account for other data suppliers. 2 Expanded Authorization Tests for CareQuality including the development of test cases and tooling to support the authorization use case in CareQuality 3 Participating in and contributing to the development and maintenance of governance rules (e.g. principles of trust and query use case and implementation guides) used by CareQuality Implementers 4 Implementation and support of the CareQuality Implementer program (e.g. directory listing agreement, application process, compliance verification, directory listing, etc.) 5 Facilitation and support of both the CareQuality Steering and Advisory Committees 6 Outreach to additional stakeholders to expand stakeholder engagement in CareQuality Enacted in February 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act required that ONC establish a governance mechanism for the NwHIN (section 3001(c)(8) of the Public Health Service Act). ONC decided to transition the management and operational responsibilities for the NwHIN Exchange. The NwHIN Coordinating Committee in conjunction with ONC determined what organization would take over the management and operations of the network. In 2012, the network was transitioned to The Sequoia Project, a public-private non-profit 501(c)(3). At that time, The Sequoia Project rebranded the network and it became known as the eHealth Exchange. Since this operational transition occurred, the agency must contract with The Sequoia Project in order to continue to request and receive medical records from its partners over the eHealth Exchange. Written responses to this Notice shall contain sufficient documentation to establish a bona-fide capability to fulfill this requirement. A solicitation is NOT available. Therefore, the Government will not honor written and/or verbal requests for copies of a solicitation related to this announcement. A determination by the government not to compete this proposed order based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Based on the information received, the Government will determine whether to conduct a competitive procurement. The Government will NOT notify Respondents of the results of the information received. You must submit your responses to this notice by WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2018 at 10:00 AM EST. You may send responses via E-MAIL ONLY to the point of contact listed below. THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT ACCEPT PHONE CALLS OR FAXES. Submissions shall not exceed 5MB. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please refer them to Contract Specialist, Deborah Lawrence-Wilson via email at Deborah.Lawrence-Wilson@ssa.gov.