NFS RFI Final.docx

Request for Information:

Nutrition and Food Services – VA Enterprise Solution

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) May 8, 2025

I. Overview This is a Request for Information (RFI) to conduct market research to determine the availability of vendor products capable of providing the following requirement. This RFI does not guarantee the issuance of an Request For Quote/Request For Proposal. If your company has the ability to provide the products and services outlined below and as represented in Attachment A - NFS Requirements 2025.NFS.OIT COTS edits to this RFI, please respond to this RFI in accordance with Section VIII, Replies.

You may also include a statement of capabilities or other supporting documentation that further assists in demonstrating your capabilities to providing a product/service that addresses VA’s requirements. Please provide any information regarding General Services Administration (GSA) contracts or other contract vehicles to which you have access, in your response.

II. Scope of Work The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is conducting market research across industry to identify a Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) Nutrition and Food Service (NFS) product that will assist VA in standardizing its NFS delivery across the approximately 172 VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) which span every state and the District of Columbia in the Continental United States (CONUS) and those Outside of CONUS (OCONUS) in U.S. states and territories to include Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

The vendor-provided NFS solution shall support standardized interface and information sharing with VA’s new Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) solution, which is based upon Cerner Oracle, as EHRM is deployed on a multi-year, wave deployment basis. The Contractor-provided solution shall meet the requirements identified in the spreadsheet included as Attachment A.

VA currently utilizes two Nutrition and Food Service (NFS) solutions, which include:

1. Computrition – approximately 140 sites

a. Solutions are maintained by individual contracts and are not standardized across VA.

2. VistA NFS – approximately 20+ sites Comment by Applegate, Stefanie: Are these numbers still accurate? This is from old RFI. Comment by Utech, Anne E. (HOU): Approximately yes

a. This solution is dependent on the VistA EHR, which will ultimately be replaced by Cerner Oracle and the NFS enterprise vendor selected.

VA intends to implement an enterprise NFS solution for all VA medical centers.

III. Technical Background The current VA architecture / infrastructure for the Computrition NFS solution is depicted as follows:

Figure 1: VA’s Current Computrition Architecture Note: There are five “silos” that support the entirety of the VA, each silo is as shown below

Computrition Hospitality Suite is an application composed of multiple application modules that utilize an Oracle Database System to store menus, recipes, meal calendars and other assorted information necessary to provide veteran meal services at approximately more than 140 different VA Medical centers. Patient information is stored in the VA’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, which pushes appropriate patient information to Hospitality Suite via a unidirectional HL7 gateway. While patient information is stored in Hospitality Suite, all information changes must be initiated in the EHR. Access to the Hospitality Suite application is currently controlled through an internal list of users, with an in progress migration strategy to implement Single-Sign On utilizing Active Directory accounts. This access is granted to individual users at the request of the designated manager from each individual site who assigns users to a variety of previously defined security levels based upon their work requirements. Backups of the Hospitality Suite are performed on a daily basis by the VA Commvault system to both on-site and remote storage. All changes to Hospitality Suite are tested using a pre-production environment.

IV. Technical Challenges As stated in Section II above, VA is modernizing its EHR system via a wave deployment strategy. The next wave deployments are currently estimated for mid-2026 in Michigan and an additional 9 sites. .

VA anticipates the enterprise NFS solution will need to be implemented, tested, deployed and trained for those sites first as part of the enterprise strategy.

Therefore, the NFS enterprise solution / vendor, in collaboration with the VA National Director of Nutrition and Food Services and EHRM will be required to:

a. Develop and implement a corollary deployment strategy (that includes implementation, testing, deployment, and training) aligned to the EHRM deployment schedule using a standardized interface that has been fully tested and validated prior to a joint EHRM/NFS Go-Live for Michigan sites and possibly others, per Figure 1.

b. Outline a timeline and transition strategy to retrofit all future go-live sites’ users to the enterprise NFS solution that includes implementation, testing, deployment, and training.

c. As EHRM deployment may shift due to unforeseen circumstances, outline a timeline and transition strategy for implementation, testing, deployment, and training for VistA users as well as a cut-over strategy for those users when due for their EHRM wave deployment that minimizes the transition impact.

For any solution to be allowed for implementation, it must undergo a review and approval process to be integrated into VA’s approved products list known as the Technical Reference Model (TRM).

Any technical approach proposing software not already approved for use in the VA architecture would have to complete all phases of VA software review and demonstrate the ability to meet information security requirements leading to a new “Authority to Operate.” For software not already approved and deployed for use in the VA architecture, this will include the following, as a minimum, for which Contractor information and/or support to provide the associated artifacts may be required:

· Design approval

· System design document

· Version description documentation

· Disaster recovery plan

· Installation/back out capability

· Master test plan

· Section 508 compliance approval

· Production and support operations manual

· Software configuration management procedures documentation

· Software documentation

· User guides

· TRM (Technical Reference Model) Approval

· Test and Evaluation plan

· Development/integration

· Software quality assurance documentation

· Installation and testing in a test environment

· Deployment in beta test at multiple VA facilities

· VA Enterprise wide deployment Any technical approach proposing software already approved for use in the VA architecture would have to demonstrate the ability to meet information security requirements and document deployment history and use within the VA (or possibly within another Federal agency, as this will be the first such enterprise NFS implementation within VA).

V. Technical Requirements and Approach Information is needed on vendor’s proposed technical approach, including infrastructure, licensing, enhancements, and compliance with VA security requirements. This includes:

1. Propose and provide an architectural depiction on the deployment of the vendor’s solution at VA that allows the capability to manage each medical center’s NFS solution individually or by group.

2. Specifically, address the following:

a. Is the solution proposed as a Software as a Service (cloud) vendor-provided solution?

b. Is the solution proposed as a delivered application, with a VA-hosted solution?

c. How would your solution be architected to provide 99.999% availability (5 AM – 8 PM for all impacted time zones, 7 days/week, after which time maintenance can be performed) and does it provide that level of availability as a standard today?

d. How is the solution managed from an administrative perspective?

3. Does vendor have a variable product feature set that may be applicable on a small, medium, large site or other feature-type basis? If yes, please describe.

4. Please highlight and describe your success at implementing your proposed solution (e.g., SaaS, delivered application/customer hosted, etc.) and the number of users supported by that solution.

5. Identify all software and licensing required, whether provided by the vendor or through other mechanisms (e.g., specify database software and other underlying software: asp.net, JAVA, etc.)

6. Describe vendor's process for receipt and queue of enhancements into its standard product offering. Include in your description an elaboration of the following:

a. What constitutes a standard, vendor-provided enhancement?

b. What constitutes a customer-paid enhancement (new capability)?

c. What is vendor process for planning patches/version updates into its overall product offering across its entire customer base so as to maintain standardization of the product?

d. What is the frequency of patch/version update roll-out for VA-requested enhancements?

e. Does the vendor provide an online mechanism with which to coordinate and track enhancement requirements and which distinguishes enhancement based upon VA prioritized patient safety, security, or other identified requirements?

7. Describe vendor’s approach to provide FIPS-compliant encryption for data in motion and for data at rest as applicable to the proposed solution architecture.

8. If software requires deployment to multiple computers, does vendor provide an automated deployment methodology?

9. Please provide a copy of vendor’s Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for the solution offering.

VI. Functional Requirements Vendor shall complete all workbook tabs in Attachment A, VA NFS Enterprise Requirements, and specify in Column E (by selecting the appropriate category in the drop down menu) whether vendor solution _(select from 1, 2 or 3 below)_ the requirement stated.

1. Fully Meets

2. Partially Meets

3. Does not meet In Column F, based on the response in Column E, please describe for the following:

1. Fully Meets – vendor’s approach to meet requirement (e.g., already part of vendor solution, planned enhancement w/ (please provide) release date, etc.)

2. Partially Meets – vendor to identify gaps in vendor’s solution against the stated requirement and provide approach/timeframe to fully meet requirement, if planned as a product enhancement.

3. Does not meet – vendor to provide approach/timeframe to fully meet requirement, if planned as a product enhancement or rationale why it is not a planned enhancement.

VII. Cost Projection This is being considered for a firm-fixed price acquisition.

Interested parties shall provide:

a) Estimated costs for licenses (whether provided as a SaaS solution, enterprise application licensing, site licensing, user-based licensing, concurrent users, and/or other alternatives).

b) Description of its pricing model (# of end users, concurrent users, # of beds) and its definition of “enterprise” in relation to the pricing model.

c) Maintenance and associated implementation costs (including testing, interfaces, deployment and training) of a managed service.

VA currently has approximately 3000 dietitians, 4500 food service workers, and additional workforce of diet technicians and support staff for approximately 37,500 beds across its 172 VAMCs.

Vendor shall address key assumptions and considerations affecting the cost projections for which VA must make decisions or take advance action to support this anticipated requirement.

VIII. Replies Please provide the following information by 12:00PM EST on May 21, 2025 via email to John Sangalang, Contract Specialist, at john.sangalang@va.gov and Stefanie Applegate, Contracting Officer, at Stefanie.Applegate@va.gov. VA reserves the right to respond to any, all, or select respondents. All VA current requirements identified herein are subject to change at any time.

If you experience any problems or have any questions concerning this announcement, please contact John Sangalang, Contract Specialist, at john.sangalang@va.gov and Stefanie Applegate, Contracting Officer, at Stefanie.Applegate@va.gov. VA appreciates your time and anticipated response.

Responses shall include:

a. Company information (company name, address, point of contact)

b. Socio-economic size and classification

c. Unique Entity Identification Number

d. Please provide any information regarding GSA contracts or other contract vehicles to which you have access, in your response.

e. Response to questions in Sections V, VI, and VII, including completion of all tabs in Attachment A.

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