Notice ID: 36C10B25Q0177
The VA’s Office of Information and Technology (OIT) on behalf of VHA Geriatrics and Extended Care (GEC) Program Office is conducting Market Research on vendors capable of providing support for the Government Off the Shelf (GOTS) Internal Quality Improvement and Evaluation Systems (iQIES) software product originally developed for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). VA anticipates that the iQIES license will be extended to cover VA usage of a subset of iQIES capabilities supporting the creation of Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI) and Minimum Data Set (MDS) analysis and reports. VA policy requires the usage of iQIES algorithms for determining whether nursing homes and state homes are meeting mandated standards for quality of care.
Currently, VA’s Legacy MDS serves as a repository of the standardized patient assessments for VHA’s Community Living Centers (CLCs) and State Veterans Homes’ nursing homes. The standardized assessments, which are referred to as MDS by health care associates are completed in applications external to the Minimum Data Set Repository. These assessments are then uploaded by the repository users via the MDS repository website. The MDS repository is then used to perform comprehensive reporting and to allow comparative review of care.
The VA’s Legacy MDS system is essentially obsolete. VA is attempting to keep the VA Legacy MDS up to date with the mandated clinical standards of care and for VHA Congressionally required reporting.
VA is researching the feasibility of implementing components of the iQIES functionality at VA to collect, store, analyze and report RAI/MDS data. For purposes of this RFI, the VA iQIES implementation will be referred to as iQIES-VA. The implementation effort would include migration of data from the VA Legacy MDS to iQIES-VA. The effort would include support in customization for VA-specific requirements as well as a maintenance agreement to keep the iQIES-VA solution updated to reflect changes in reporting requirements and analysis algorithms implemented in iQIES.
The VAEC-AWS is connected to the VA network via AWS Direct Connect. iQIES-VA will be provisioned as a virtual private cloud (VPC) for production, pre-production and development environments. The Contractor will be required to obtain and maintain an application-level Authority to Operate (ATO) for the iQIES-VA.
iQIES-VA shall maintain the ability to produce both Resource Utilization Group (RUG) and Patient Driven Payment Model (PDPM) data according to VHA manpower/staffing/reimbursement requirements.
The Contractor shall keep iQIES-VA in synch with iQIES and current with all of the normative published National Standards as they evolve, esp. MDS 3.0 Quality Measures User’s Manual (current version), and Long-Term Care Facility Resident Assessment Instrument 3.0 User’s Manual, current version.
iQIES-VA will be integrated with VA Identity and Access Management (IAM) Single Sign On (SSO) PIV Card for internal VA users and SSO external (Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)) for SVH users.
While the implementation of the Oracle Health Electronic Health Record (EHR) solution that VA is currently undertaking includes Geriatric and Extended Care capability that will eventually address RAI/MDS requirements, the purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to implement iQIES-VA as an interim solution that will provide MDS capability through at least FY2036, and potentially longer if the Oracle Health implementation is delayed. VA is still in its preliminary Market Research stage of the new VA MDS requirement at this time.
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