Sources Sought Notice – The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)

Notice Type: Sources Sought Notice

Posted Date: 24-APR-17

Office Address: Department of Health and Human Services; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; Contracts Management; 5600 Fishers LaneMailstop: 06N34B Rockville MD 20857

Subject: The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)

Classification Code: B - Special studies and analysis - not R&D

Solicitation Number: HHS-AHRQ-SBSS-18-10001

Contact: Megan L Osele, Phone 3014271460, Email megan.osele@ahrq.hhs.gov - Erin B. Mills, Phone 3014271169, Email Erin.Mills@ahrq.hhs.gov

Description: Department of Health and Human Services

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Contracts Management

Introduction: This is a Small Business Sources Sought notice (SBSS). This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding: (1) the availability and capability of qualified small business sources; (2) whether they are small business; HUBZone small businesses; service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses; 8(a) small businesses; veteran-owned small businesses; woman-owned small businesses; or small disadvantaged businesses; and (3) their size classification relative to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for the proposed acquisition. Your responses to the information requested will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible. An organization that is not considered a small business under the applicable NAICS code should not submit a response to this notice. Project Description and Requirements: The mission of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used. To accompany this mission, AHRQ is focusing on the following priorities: Priority 1: Improve health care quality. Priority 2: Make health care safer. Priority 3: Increase accessibility. Priority 4: Improve health care affordability, efficiency and cost transparency. To achieve its mission, the Agency conducts and supports a broad base of scientific research and promotes improvements in clinical and health system practices, including the prevention of diseases and other health conditions. AHRQ sponsors and conducts research that develops and presents evidence-based information on healthcare outcomes, quality, comparative effectiveness, patient safety, cost, use, and access. To help fulfill this goal, AHRQ operates the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), a family of health care databases and related software tools, products, and statistical reports to inform policy makers, health system leaders, researchers, and the public. Through voluntary partnerships with nearly 50 State, Federal, and Industry organizations, HCUP has grown from a single database limited to inpatient hospital care to a family of six state- and national-level databases, covering inpatient, ambulatory surgery, emergency department, and pediatric encounters. As a result, HCUP has become the largest all-payer resource of multi-year hospital discharge data from community, non-Federal, short-term (acute care), general, and specialty hospitals in the U.S. These databases enable research on a broad range of health policy issues, including cost and quality of health services, medical practice patterns, access to health care, and outcomes of treatments at the national, state, and local market levels. The participation of state-wide public and private data Partners is essential for the success of the HCUP project and is based on cooperative, detailed agreements made between AHRQ and each data Partner. HCUP currently has inpatient data from 47 States and the District of Columbia, and emergency department and ambulatory surgery and services data from 35 States each. The inpatient data represents 97 percent of all community hospital discharges in the United States. Currently, HCUP is producing 48 inpatient databases (SID), 35 ambulatory surgery and services (SASD), 35 emergency department (SEDD), one national database on inpatient visits (NIS), one national database on children's inpatient visits (KID), one nationwide database on emergency department visits (NEDS) and one nationwide database on hospital readmissions (NRD). Since some databases span up to 28 years, approximately 930 cumulative databases are now available to the public. More than one dozen data and analytic software tools and supplemental files are also supported by HCUP to facilitate users' ability to use the large administrative databases. Detailed descriptions of the project and data can be found at the HCUP Web site at: www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov. The HCUP databases are quite large in size and contain a core set of clinical and nonclinical information found in a typical discharge abstract including all-listed diagnoses and procedures, discharge status, patient demographics, and charges for all patients, regardless of payer (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, uninsured). The information is translated into a uniform format to facilitate both multi-State and national-State comparisons and analyses. Links to all HCUP databases and detailed descriptions are available at: https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/databases.jsp. Prospective purchasers and all persons with access to the databases are required to read and sign a Data Use Agreement and must agree to use the database for research and statistical purposes only and to make no attempts to identify individuals. AHRQ has developed free software tools that can be used not only with the HCUP databases listed above, but also with other administrative databases. These tools can be downloaded without charge and include such clinical classification software, comorbidity software, cost-to-charge ratios, and chronic condition indicator. All the HCUP tools are described at: http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/tools_software.jsp. In addition to data and tools, HCUP also encompasses such activities as creating timely information from the data, providing user support, electronic documentation, centralized data distribution, technical data training, publications, and research, among others. The next phase of HCUP will build on the structure of the project that has been developed over the past 30 years and add to the project's capacity to provide information that can be used by researchers and policymakers to assess and evaluate health care delivery in the United States. By maintaining and strengthening the foundation, which includes a successful partnership with HCUP Partners, and by maintaining and creating new enhancements to the project, AHRQ will broaden the reach and impact of HCUP data and products. Strengthening and enhancing the project enables improvement in its ability to inform, evaluate, analyze and measure healthcare delivery and safety improvements, and provides the possibility of developing new collaborative efforts within HHS and other federal and State partners, thereby adding to HCUP's value and visibility. To meet the goals of this project, the following activities are required: * Maintain data partners, complete data applications, negotiate or update Memorandums of Agreement for participation, purchase data from HCUP Partners, recruit additional data from existing partners, and establish new partnerships when possible * Process and create uniformly formatted state inpatient and outpatient encounter-level data files obtained from HCUP Partners organizations * Sample the HCUP state databases to create derivative national databases * Provide for the centralized distribution of HCUP data, handling all activities directly related to the sales and dissemination of the restricted access public release HCUP databases (the national databases abbreviated NIS, KID, NEDS, NRD and related HCUP files. (See https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/databases.jsp ) * Maintain and further develop the HCUP website (HCUP-US) which serves as the project's primary vehicle for public outreach, and a virtual repository for project information and documentation * Develop products, tools, and services to assist with the productive use of the data * Facilitate the collaborative learning among all members of the project (AHRQ, HCUP Partner organizations, data users, health systems, and stakeholders) by providing technical support and training * Deliver user technical support on HCUP databases, software tools, linkable files, written reports, and all other products developed for the HCUP project * Conduct data analytics, research and policy analyses using the HCUP data to explore the impact of changes in health policy on health care, to document and analyze explanations for trends in health care, and to propose and test alternate hypotheses about the relative importance and impact of a variety of system and clinical factors on health care outcomes * Prepare technical reports and publications. * Conduct outreach to increase use and impact from HCUP * Support the generation of estimates derived from HCUP data for other federal use, e.g. Congressionally-mandated reports such as the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports * Develop processes for monitoring and maintaining secure and efficient computing environment

HCUP is a highly complex and multifaceted project. In the past five years, demand for and use of HCUP data and tools has grown significantly. Visits to the HCUP websites have nearly doubled from 1.1 million to almost 2.2 million. Applications for databases have increased from approximately 1,000 per year to more than 1,400 per year. HCUP answers 1,500 to 1,750 technical assistance inquiries each year. National and State policymakers use these data and tools in their decision making. In addition, HCUP has increasingly been asked to take a leadership role in efforts to further develop and standardize administrative data. Anticipated Period of Performance: The anticipated Period of Performance will be from December 27, 2017 through December 26, 2022 for a base period of one year with four (4) one year option periods. Other Important Considerations: Firms should note that HCUP research data and databases are not stored on-line. Only the nationwide databases are available for download on the HCUP-US Web site following an online training and completion of a data use agreement. HCUP generally does not receive electronic transfer of data nor does it provide any external access to the computing system used for collection or processing of HCUP data. Information Sought: Potential offerors must provide, as part of their response, information concerning: a) Staff expertise, including their availability, experience, and formal and other training; b) Current in-house capability and capability to perform the work at the scale/magnitude of the HCUP Project; c) Corporate experience and management capability; d) Prior completed projects of similar nature that involved maintaining and managing multiple, multi-faceted activities concurrently at the highest level of professional and scientific quality; e) Capacity to ensure the timely, high-quality, secure production of health research databases annually while simultaneously conducting complex clinical, economic and health services research through analytic and technical reports; e) Evidence of developing and analyzing a large scale administrative encounter-level database; and f) Examples of prior completed Government contracts, references, and other related Contractors must describe their capacity and experience as it relates to the project requirements described above. Information Submission Instructions: Interested qualified small business organizations should submit a tailored capability statement for this requirement.

The cover page must include the following: * DUNS number * Organization name * Organization address * Size and type of business (e.g., 8(a), HUBZone, etc) pursuant to NAICS code 541690. * Technical point(s) of contact, including names, titles, addresses, telephone, and e-mail addresses.

All Capability Statements sent in response to this SMALL BUSINESS SOURCES SOUGHT notice must be submitted electronically (via e-mail) to Megan Osele, Contract Specialist, megan.osele@ahrq.hhs.gov in MS Word, or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), no later than 11:00 AM on May 9, 2017. Responses should not exceed 15 single-sided pages (including the cover page, all attachments, resumes, charts, etc.) presented in single-space and using a 12-point font size minimum, that clearly details the ability to perform the aspects of the notice described above. Only capability statements tailored to this specific requirement will be deemed responsive.

Disclaimer and Important Notes: This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization's qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation will be published in Federal Business Opportunities. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation. Confidentiality: No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).

Link/URL: https://www.fbo.gov/spg/HHS/AHRQ/DCM/HHS-AHRQ-SBSS-18-10001/listing.html