JA_Redacted.pdf

E-Prescribing RxTracker Solution CONTROL NUMBER: VA-26-00069132

VISN 17

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair

(RFO) 16.507- s exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold, a statute expressly authorizes or requires that the purchase be made from a specified

Program provides the authority to directly contract with an SDVOSB or a Veteran- Owned Small Business (VOSB).

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on the market research described in Section 8, the Government determined that only the DSS, Inc.

RxTracker ePrescribing solution can meet VISN 17's requirements, and that only one authorized reseller of RxTracker qualifies under the VA Veterans First Contracting Program. The proposed source for this acquisition is Minburn as they are a certified SDVOSB and an authorized reseller of DSS RxTracker ePrescribing Solution. RxTracker is the only commercially available outbound ePrescribing solution with a pre-built, operationally validated, and VA-authorized interface to VistA and CPRS, VA's proprietary, government-owned Electronic Health Record (EHR) and order-entry systems.

RxTracker enables prescription orders to be created directly within CPRS, ensuring VA drug formulary checks are performed before an e-Prescription is generated. It then transmits the outbound prescription to community pharmacies and simultaneously writes the non-VA medication record back into VistA, preserving a complete and legally sufficient medication history in the Veteran's VA chart. No other solution on the market provides this bi-directional write-back to VistA without substantial custom development. Additionally, RxTracker is certified on the Surescripts network, the national standard for retail pharmacy ePrescribing, and is HIPAA-compliant. The combination of Surescripts certification, HIPAA compliance, and native VistA/CPRS interoperability is unique to RxTracker in the current marketplace.

RxTracker is already being implemented at VISN 2 and VISN 4, demonstrating that VA has evaluated and accepted RxTracker as the appropriate standardized outbound ePrescribing solution for its VistA-based environment. This existing footprint means RxTracker arrives with a known security posture and a validated integration pattern, materially reducing implementation risk and time-to-deployment for VISN 17.

Other commercial ePrescribing products are engineered to integrate with commercial EHR platforms, not with VA's proprietary VistA/CPRS architecture.

Adopting any of these alternatives would require VA to fund extensive custom development, system configuration, integration, testing, and a new Authority to Operate (ATO) before a single prescription could be transmitted. During that period, VISN 17 providers would remain dependent on manual faxing, handwriting, and telephoning of prescriptions.

Selecting any solution other than RxTracker for the VISN 17 requirement would therefore impose duplicative and unrecoverable costs. VA has already invested in the development and validation of the RxTracker/VistA interface deployed at VISN 2 and VISN 4; procuring a different platform for VISN 17 would require VA to fund a parallel, redundant integration and ATO effort estimated at a minimum of 12 months and at least $1.4M in additional licensing, development, configuration, integration, and personnel training costs. These duplicative costs are based on prior VA development and configuration efforts of similar size and scope and would not be recovered through competition.

Finally, the continued absence of a standardized, automated outbound ePrescribing solution perpetuates a manual process that directly endangers Veteran patient safety and exposes VA to avoidable legal and operational risk. Under the current process, VISN 17 providers must fax, handwrite, or telephone prescriptions to retail pharmacies, methods with well-documented points of failure, including illegible handwriting, transcription errors at the receiving pharmacy, wrong-drug and wrong-dose mistakes, missed drug-interaction and allergy checks, and prescriber-pharmacist miscommunication, any of which can result in adverse drug events and patient harm. These manual methods also create no reliable, auditable documentation in the legal medical record, leaving CPRS/VistA without a corresponding entry of what was prescribed, when, and to which pharmacy; this gap undermines continuity of care, raises the risk of duplicate therapy and dangerous interactions, exposes VA to legal liability when the record cannot substantiate the care provided, and complicates any subsequent clinical review or adverse-event investigation. The process further imposes a recurring administrative burden on VISN 17 clinical staff, who divert time from direct patient care to place calls, resolve pharmacist callbacks, re-send incomplete prescriptions, and manually reconcile records. Selecting a non-RxTracker solution or taking no action would prolong each of these conditions. Awarding to the only source capable of delivering an immediately deployable, VistA/CPRS-integrated, Surescripts-certified outbound ePrescribing solution is therefore essential to protecting Veteran patient safety, maintaining the integrity of the legal medical record, and meeting VISN 17's operational requirements without further delay.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. Consistent with the guidelines of the Veterans First Contracting Program, the proposed action described herein will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities Page in accordance with RFO Part 5.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be completed. All future requirements will be handled on a case-by-case basis to determine any future acquisition strategy.

8. Market Research:

research to ascertain the ability of any other source that can provide the aforementioned services. VA technical experts conducted web-based market research in May 2026 by researching other similar brand name items. Commercial ePrescribing products reviewed included software and support from Epic Systems Corporation, Cerner/Oracle Health, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc./Veradigm, Inc., and DrFirst Inc., however, none of these products offer a pre-built, VA-authorized, and operationally validated interface with VistA/CPRS. These solutions are designed for integration with commercial EHR platforms and cannot fulfill the Government's requirement for bi-directional VistA/CPRS interoperability and Surescripts-certified outbound prescribing without substantial, cost-prohibitive custom development and a new ATO. No verified SDVOSB or VOSB other than Minburn was identified as capable of meeting all technical requirements of this acquisition. No other vendor, SDVOSB, VOSB, or otherwise, is authorized by DSS to sell, integrate, or support the RxTracker solution. Accordingly, only Minburn can fulfill this requirement under the Veterans First Contracting Program.

Additional market research was performed in August 2026 utilizing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) Provider Lookup tool, which yielded four prospective contract holders that provide brand name DSS products. However, only two contract holders are resellers of the DSS Rx Tracker solution. Furthermore, on July 21, 2026, DSS provided a letter confirming that there are only two authorized resellers of the RxTracker solution. One reseller, Minburn, is a certified SDVOSB and the second is Blue Tech, Inc., which is classified as a Small Business. Both resellers are NASA SEWP V GWAC contract holders.

The Small Business Administration Veteran Small Business Certification (VetCert) database was accessed on July 20, 2026. This search concluded that Minburn is registered and certified and qualifies as a SDVOSB in accordance with the Federal small business size standard for the applicable North American Industry Classification System Code 541519. It was verified on July 20, 2026, that Minburn is registered in the System for Award Management (sam.gov) database and is eligible to receive a Government contract.

As a result of the aforementioned market research, it was determined that Minburn is capable of providing the required DSS RxTracker ePrescribing solution that can the Veterans First Contracting Program, the statutory authority permitting other than uthorized or

16.507-6(b)(5). For this action, 38 U.S.C. 8127(c), known as the Veterans First Contracting Program provides the authority to directly contract with a SDVOSB or a VOSB. Therefore, this effort will be conducted on a sole source basis with Minburn via its NASA SEWP V GWAC contract.

9. Other Facts: The Procuring Contracting Officer has determined that this proposed action meets all the requirements of 38 U.S.C. 8127(c). This acquisition is below the

$5,000,000.00 threshold, Minburn is a responsible SDVOSB for performance of the services described herein, and the proposed contract can be awarded at a fair and reasonable price.