AHRQ Quality Indicators Program

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, established a Master IDIQ on January 15, 2012 to support the AHRQ Quality Indicators Program, but ordering under this vehicle closed on January 14, 2017 — the vehicle is no longer active.

The vehicle procured technical support services for AHRQ's Quality Indicators, a set of healthcare quality measurement tools used for national, state, and hospital-level public reporting and quality tracking. Work under the vehicle focused on quality indicator development, recalibration, and analytic enhancement, including measure refinement, database analysis, and consumer testing. Task orders were structured as cost-plus-fixed-fee, cost-no-fee, and firm-fixed-price delivery orders.

The Leland Stanford Junior University dominated the vehicle, holding five of ten task orders with $22.3 million in combined potential value — roughly 83 percent of the vehicle's total. Mathematica Inc. received four orders valued at $4.4 million, while American Institutes for Research received a single order for $305 thousand. All orders were unrestricted, non-competitive awards from a single customer: AHRQ Headquarters. Order flow declined through the vehicle's life: four orders in 2012, two in 2013, two in 2014, one in 2015, and one in 2016. Of the $27 million combined potential value across all ten orders, $19.6 million (73 percent) was obligated by the time ordering closed.

Task-order values ranged from approximately $305 thousand to $12.8 million in ceiling value. Representative 2014–2016 orders included Analytic Enhancement of AHRQ Quality Indicators ($12.8 million ceiling), Network of Patient Safety Databases Analyses ($4.5 million ceiling), and Recalibration of Select PSIs for CMS Hospital Reporting Programs ($857 thousand ceiling).

This vehicle is closed to new orders and no longer a source for new work.

AHRQ is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the quality, safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of health care. AHRQ has developed an array of health care decision making and research tools that can be used by various audiences such as program managers, purchasers, consumers, researchers, government agencies and others. One of these tools, the AHRQ Quality Indicators (QIs), is widely used for national, state-level and hospital-level public reporting and tracking, highlighting potential quality concerns, and identifying areas that need further study and investigation by a number of stakeholders.