Quality-Adjusted Life Year Loss Estimates for WISQARS Cost of Injury Reports

This is a notice of intent to award a sole source contract and is not a request for competitive proposals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) hereby announces its intent to award a sole source contract to Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), 11720 Beltsville Drive, Ste. 900, Calverton, MD 20705 for the acquisition of services for the project titled: "Quality-Adjusted Life Year Loss Estimates for Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Cost of Injury Reports". The statutory authority for this sole source acquisition is 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1) in accordance with FAR Part 6.302-1, only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy the agency requirement. The NAICS code for this acquisition is 541690, Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services. The period of performance for this procurement is 12 months. The purpose of this procurement is to procure professional services to support the development of quality-adjusted life years (QALY) lost estimates for injury related deaths, hospitalizations and ED visits which will be made available to the public using NCIPC's WISQARS Cost of Injury Reports module. Currently, WISQARS estimates only includes costs of medical care and work loss. Including QALY losses will bring WISQARS estimates in line with recommendations valuing the cost of health losses in regulatory impact analyses. The urgent reason that QALYs must be included in the WISQARS cost estimates is due to the declared national emergency of the opioid epidemic, in particular, for the valuation of the opioid epidemic due to the underestimation, which is the result of a lack of a QALY value measure in the WISQARS cost module. Rapid implementation of these estimates are also needed to help state and local health departments and health care providers throughout the health care system, better understand the true impact of the opioid epidemic. Market research was conducted to find a vendor with the capabilities to complete this requirement. Only the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) was found to have this capability by utilizing their system known as the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). NEISS is the data system used for WISQARS. PIRE has also developed the Injury Impairment Index (III) which measures the quality-adjusted life years lost due to hospitalization and emergency department related injuries. This tool employs the use of codes from NEISS. At this time, PIRE's III is the only tool available that provides QALY measures and uses NEISS codes. PIRE's access to the required data sets (NEISS data) and the SAS infrastructure supporting them, are critical to the efficient performance of producing QALY measures for the WISQARS cost module. In addition, as part of a larger injury cost project, PIRE has completed estimates of injury incidence and costs/consequences that combine data on fatalities, hospitalized survivors and survivors who were not hospitalized. PIRE's capabilities for this project are unique in their specific focus on the issues at hand. No other vendor is able to provide quality-adjusted life year loss estimates for all types of injuries identified and, therefore, are unable to meet the Government's requirements. As a result of this synopsis, no competitive solicitation will be posted on FedBizOpps.com. We will only issue a solicitation to Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE). However, all responsible sources who believe they can meet these requirements, may submit their capabilities and/or qualifications to Tonya S. Justice, Contracting Officer, via email to TJustice@cdc.gov, no later than 10:00am eastern standard time on July 20, 2018. Reference solicitation number RFP #75D301-18-Q-68571 in the subject line of the email. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed action will be based on responses to this notice and is solely in the discretion of the Contracting Officer. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.