Physician Quality Measures Management

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) intends to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the management and implementation of multiple physician quality programs including the Physician Quality Reporting System, Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program, and other programs that rely on and/or leverage quality data collected under these programs or the reporting infrastructure of these programs. CMS builds its measure development and maintenance work on the National Quality Strategy's (NQS) three aims of better quality of care, better health, and lower costs, and the following six priorities: clinical quality of care, care coordination, population/community health, safety, person- and caregiver-centered experience and outcomes, efficiency and cost reduction. These focus areas shall drive measure development, selection, and maintenance. CMS intends to obtain support services for the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) to include maintenance and support of the measures, analytic services (including but not limited to trending performance rates etc.) and implementation support. This includes all measures within PQRS, eleven (11) CMS-owned measures and non-CMS owned measures used for reporting and performance for the PQRS Program and other quality reporting programs to include but not limited to Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), Meaningful Use (MU), or Value Based Modifier (VBM). This also includes maintaining and supporting up to six (6) additional measures (that do not have current steward ownership) if the COR requests that those additional measures be included for the PQRS program. Furthermore, the Contractor will conduct business through partnerships within CMS, across other Federal and state agencies and non-government entities to promote health information technology. As part of the harmonization process within CMS, the Contractor shall be familiar with the Lean Single Piece Flow (SPF) system in conjunction with scrum/agile when retooling and updating measures. Single Piece Flow refers to the Lean concept of moving one work piece (a measure or small group of measures) at a time through the development cycle rather than process an entire batch of measures before moving it to the next operation. Scrum/agile refers to a Lean methodology that is an iterative and incremental development framework for managing software projects and product or application development. This procurement is a competitive 8(a) set-aside, under NAICS code 541614 (Process, Physical Distribution, and Logistics Consulting Services) with a size standard of $14 million. The SBA has assigned number 0373/13/302189/01 for tracking purposes of this contract requirement. It is anticipated that CMS will award a one (1) year cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with four (4) option years. This synopsis is in reference to RFP-CMS-PQMM-2013-0001. This announcement is not a request for proposal (RFP). The solicitation package will be available on or 15 calendar days after this notice and the due date of receipt of proposals are 30 days from the RFP issue date. The solicitation will be available on the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) website. Contract awards are anticipated by September 30, 2013. It will be the Offeror's responsibility to frequently check the FedbizOpps site where the solicitation is to be posted for any amendments, changes to the RFP issue and closing date. Questions related to this synopsis should be referred to Irina Perl at Irina.Perl@cms.hhs.gov. Contractors must be free of conflicts of interest or prepare an OCI mitigation plan to address any actual, potential or apparent organizational conflicts of interest that could arise. All contractual and technical questions must be submitted in writing (via e-mail). Telephone questions will not be accepted. The Government is not obligated or committed to award any contract as a result of this notice. Hard copies or CD ROMs will not be available. Telephone and fax requests will not be honored. Source selection procedures will be used with the intent to award a cost plus fixed-fee contract to the responsible Offeror whose proposal, conforming to the Request for Proposal (RFP), is the most advantageous and offers the best value to the Government, price and other factors considered.