TELEMENTORING

Defense Health Agency, Request for Information: HT0011-15-R-TELEMENTOR Telementoring to Improve Quality Outcomes for Condition-based Care DEFINITION: Telementoring is a teaching model to increase capacity of primary care resources, multiply the expertise of specialists, and ensure high quality and accessible case management. I. Purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) This Request for Information (RFI) is to secure a contract to develop the capacity in the Military Health System (MHS) to safely and effectively treat chronic, common, and complex diseases using a telementoring approach. The Clinical Support Division's Chief of Condition-Based Specialty Care will use the approach to work on a strategic focus area of the MHS: Improving quality outcomes for condition-based care. The Clinical Support Division currently is working with various stakeholders on a pain-management telementoring effort to support this focus area. The contractor support team will assist the MHS in establishing a sustainable pain-management telementoring program and will then advise and support the MHS in expansion of telementoring programs for other clinical focus areas that would benefit from such programs II. Background In response to variation in chronic care treatment across the MHS, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (ASD (HA)) approved a pilot project to offer telementoring support to improve primary care knowledge and decrease the number of non-essential referrals to specialty care. The telementoring service will begin with a clinical needs assessment, as well as a technology needs assessment, and then deliver a model for specialist hubs and remote primary care provider spokes (one-to-many) to pilot telementoring initiatives. Telementoring is a teaching model to increase the capacity of primary care resources, multiply the expertise of specialists, and ensure high quality and accessible case management. The telementoring model offers telementoring technical training and user support to provide a basic understanding of the standard methods for telementoring and to define the steps for setting up telementoring systems. III. Current Situation On June 10, 2014, the ASD(HA) signed a decision paper to expand the MHS capacity to deliver high-quality chronic care to those most in need through a telementoring approach. A. Telementoring is part of an initiative to: 1. Improve primary care knowledge, self-efficacy, and attitudes. 2. Leverage technology to facilitate case-based training by specialists to primary care providers in their local setting. 3. Decrease staff turnover. 4. Increase provider satisfaction. 5. Decrease the number of non-essential referrals to specialty care in the direct and purchased care system. 6. Reduce inadequate or disparities in access to care. 7. Facilitate dissemination and adoption of clinical best practices. 8. Decrease the cost of travel for clinicians to obtain continuing medical education. The MHS seeks to engage with a partner who has experience using the telementoring approach training providers to safely and effectively treat chronic, common and complex disease while monitoring outcomes to continuously drive toward positive clinical outcomes. B. We desire to achieve the following high-level goals: 1. Provide the subject matter expertise of a small number of telementoring experts to teach the MHS to become self-sustaining in telementoring. 2. Train MHS clinicians on how to organize and develop content to be delivered using the telementoring approach. 3. Convene, host, and create telementoring sessions to train the MHS in how to teach primary care providers to care for complex patients, raising the skill and confidence level of these providers and allowing them to work at the highest level of their credentials. 4. Reduce variation in clinical care for chronic, common and complex diseases across the MHS using Telementoring. 5. Establish a hub-and-spoke infrastructure throughout the MHS to address critical physician training and case management needs as identified by leadership and aligned with MHS strategy. 6. Identify continuing medical education needs and strategic opportunities for telementoring to retain primary care providers and offer technical training. IV. How to Respond A. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes - it does not constitute a solicitation nor does it restrict the Government as to the ultimate acquisition approach. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Any contract that might be awarded based on information received or derived from this market research will be the outcome of a competitive process. Responders are advised that the U.S. Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this RFI. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested vendor's expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. B. The formal closing date for this RFI and for the submission of responses is 26 May 2015, 2:00pm. All responses should be submitted electronically using .pdf, HTML, MS Word or PowerPoint formats with subject "HT0011-15-R-TELEMENTOR" to the following Email addresses: millie.a.mitchell.civ@mail.mil and bradley.h.hill.ctr@mail.mil C. Content of responses should address how the Offeror's telementoring capabilities can help Defense Health Agency to achieve III B (1-6) above. *Total e-mail file limit size is restricted to 5MB. Files exceeding this threshold shall be submitted over multiple messages, and be identified as "Message #x of #x". The official DoD contacts for this RFI to whom all requests and communications should be addressed are: Millie A. Mitchell, Contracting Officer - millie.a.mitchell.civ@mail.mil Bradley Hill, Contract Specialist - bradley.h.hill.ctr@mail.mil, 703-681-7644