RFI_33901-00393_for_Electronic_Health_Record_(EHR).pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE

DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE SERVICES

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

FOR

ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD SYSTEM

RFI # 33901-00393

MAY 11, 2026

1. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE:

The State of Tennessee, Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (“TDMHSAS”) issues this Request for Information (“RFI”) for the purpose of reviewing options available for an Electronic Health Record (“EHR”) system. We appreciate your input and participation in this process.

2. BACKGROUND:

The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services operates four (4) Regional Mental Health Institutes (“RMHIs”) that provide inpatient psychiatric care and treatment for individuals across the state. These facilities are located in Chattanooga, Nashville, Bolivar, and Memphis, and collectively serve a patient population with complex behavioral health needs.

Across these facilities, TDMHSAS supports approximately six hundred (600) inpatient beds. The current clinical and administrative operations are supported by an estimated two thousand (2,000) named system users, with approximately four hundred (400) concurrent users at peak utilization.

TDMHSAS is seeking information from qualified vendors regarding EHR) systems and related solutions that can support and enhance inpatient behavioral health operations. The Department is particularly interested in modern, scalable platforms that provide workflow optimization, advanced clinical tools, robust reporting and analytics, interoperability and integration capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled functionality, and strong data privacy and security controls.

3. COMMUNICATIONS:

3.1. Please submit your response to this RFI via email to:

Mary Lee, Director of Contracts/Senior Associate Counsel Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Mary.Lee@tn.gov

3.2. Please feel free to contact the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services with any questions regarding this RFI. The main point of contact will be:

mailto:Mary.Lee@tn.gov

Mary Lee, Director of Contracts/Senior Associate Counsel Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Mary.Lee@tn.gov

(615) 587-1557

3.3. Please reference RFI # 33901-00393 with all communications to this RFI.

4. RFI SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

EVENT

TIME

(Central Time Zone)

DATE

(all dates are State business days)

1. RFI Issued May 11, 2026

2. RFI Response Deadline 4:00 p.m. June 15, 2026

5. GENERAL INFORMATION:

5.1. Please note that responding to this RFI is not a prerequisite for responding to any future solicitations related to this project and a response to this RFI will not create any contract rights. Responses to this RFI will become property of the State.

5.2. The information gathered during this RFI is part of an ongoing procurement. In order to prevent an unfair advantage among potential respondents, the RFI responses will not be available until after the completion of evaluation of any responses, proposals, or bids resulting from a Request for Qualifications, Request for Proposals, Invitation to Bid or other procurement method. In the event that the state chooses not to go further in the procurement process and responses are never evaluated, the responses to the procurement including the responses to the RFI, will be considered confidential by the State.

5.3. The State will not pay for any costs associated with responding to this RFI.

6. INFORMATIONAL FORMS:

The State is requesting the following information from all interested parties. Please fill out the following forms:

mailto:Mary.Lee@tn.gov

RFI #33901-00393

TECHNICAL INFORMATIONAL FORM

1. RESPONDENT LEGAL ENTITY NAME:

2. RESPONDENT CONTACT PERSON:

Name, Title:

Address:

Phone Number:

Email:

3. Describe your organization, ownership structure, financial stability, years providing behavioral health EHR solutions, and any mergers or acquisitions within the past five (5) years.

4. Describe your experience supporting state-operated or government-operated inpatient psychiatric hospitals, including the number of facilities currently served, approximate bed counts, length of time organizations have been live on your platform, and at least three public-sector psychiatric hospital references.

5. Describe lessons learned, implementation challenges, and operational outcomes from supporting multi-facility state-operated psychiatric hospitals operating under centralized governance.

6. Describe your experience working within government procurement, cybersecurity, audit, public records, and regulatory compliance environments.

7. Describe how your platform supports core psychiatric inpatient workflows, including admissions, transfers, discharges (ADT), psychiatric evaluations, multidisciplinary treatment planning, and discharge planning.

8. Describe how your platform supports seclusion, restraint, suicide precautions, violence risk management, observation levels, escalation workflows, alerts, and regulatory compliance tracking.

9. Describe how your platform supports forensic and competency-to-stand-trial patient populations, including legal status management, court-related workflows, and patient tracking

10. Describe treatment planning capabilities, including workflow design, version control, multidisciplinary collaboration, and whether treatment plans can be maintained as a single longitudinal record versus multiple fragmented components (e.g., initial plan, reviews, master plans, updates).

11. Describe how diagnoses, problem lists, and care plans are managed over time, including historical tracking, inactive diagnoses, versioning, and lifecycle management across the patient record.

12. Describe psychiatric nursing workflows, including shift handoffs, rounding, observation documentation, safety checks, and behavioral/incident event capture.

13. Describe support for unit operations, including census management, bed management, staffing visibility, and operational throughput.

14. Describe how your platform supports hospital-grade medication workflows, including computerized provider order entry (CPOE), electronic medication administration records (eMAR), medication reconciliation, psychotropic workflows, and PRN medication management.

15. Describe your platform’s closed-loop medication management capabilities, including barcode medication administration, medication verification, and patient safety controls.

16. Describe medication-related alerts, warnings, hard stops, adverse reaction documentation, refusal documentation, and medication error tracking.

17. Describe how your platform integrates with automated medication dispensing systems (e.g., Pyxis or similar solutions). Include support for real-time medication order interfacing, cabinet inventory management, user authentication, controlled substance workflows, discrepancy handling, override tracking, and reconciliation processes. Please also describe your integration approach, supported vendors, data flow, and any dependencies on third-party systems or middleware.

18. Describe whether your platform includes a fully integrated pharmacy management module. If yes, describe capabilities including medication formulary management, order verification, dispensing workflows, compounding support, inventory management, controlled substance tracking, and pharmacist clinical review workflows.

19. Describe the level of local configuration and control available to a single customer/entity (e.g., Tennessee) to implement workflow, documentation, form, or compliance changes without requiring network-wide consensus or vendor-wide standard changes. Include examples related to state law changes, The Joint Commission findings, and internal workflow improvement requests. Clearly identify what changes can be performed locally versus those requiring vendor development, governance approval, or global release cycles.

20. Describe governance models used by organizations operating multiple hospitals on a shared platform, including change control, enterprise standardization, configuration ownership, and facility-specific workflow management.

21. Describe compliance with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services standards, The Joint Commission requirements, Tennessee regulations, and patient rights documentation.

22. Describe support for 42 CFR Part 2 compliance, including data segmentation, consent management, and access restrictions.

23. Describe record retention capabilities, including policy flexibility, configurable retention schedules, historical record management, archival workflows, and support for state-specific retention requirements. Include whether retention can be managed more flexibly than an “all-or-nothing” retention model.

24. Describe your platform’s interoperability capabilities, including support for HL7, FHIR, CDA, APIs, and integration with ADT systems, laboratory systems, pharmacy systems, health information exchanges, and third-party clinical applications.

25. Describe transition-of-care capabilities, including discharge summary exchange, coordination with community providers, emergency departments, courts, forensic agencies, and correctional systems.

26. Describe your current third-party integration ecosystem and provide a list of external vendors/systems commonly integrated with your EHR across your client network.

27. Describe enterprise reporting, analytics governance, self-service reporting, and statewide reporting capabilities across multi-facility public-sector healthcare organizations.

28. Describe your organization’s analytics and reporting capabilities, including native dashboards, ad hoc reporting tools, and executive/operational dashboards. Please specify whether dashboards are included in the base product or offered as add-ons, what data domains are supported (e.g., clinical, operational, financial), how frequently data is refreshed (e.g., real-time, near real-time, batch), and whether customers can build and maintain custom dashboards without vendor development or professional services.

29. Describe the technical documentation available to support enterprise analytics, including data dictionaries, schema documentation, data lineage, and ETL documentation.

30. Does your EHR include an integrated billing or revenue cycle module? If yes, describe capabilities including registration, eligibility/benefits, authorizations, charge capture, coding support, claims generation, remittance/ERA posting, denial management, patient statements, and collections. If not native, identify commonly integrated billing vendors and how integrations function.

31. Describe your support for claims processing, payer connectivity, and clearinghouse integrations. Identify which clearinghouses are commonly supported and describe data flow, timing, reconciliation, and exception handling.

32. Describe your platform’s security architecture, including encryption standards, role-based access controls, audit logging, breach detection, incident response, and downtime workflows.

33. Describe the technical architecture of the solution, including hardware platform, operating systems, database platform, application servers, web servers, middleware, infrastructure dependencies, and supported deployment models. Please indicate whether vendor-hosted, cloud-hosted, on-premise, or hybrid deployment options are available.

34. Describe your hosting, infrastructure, uptime commitments, disaster recovery, business continuity planning, and service-level commitments supporting 24/7 inpatient hospital operations.

35. Over the next three (3) years, are there any planned upgrades, platform changes, module retirements, architectural changes, or product roadmap items that could materially impact current functionality, integrations, performance, supportability, training, or downtime? If yes, please describe planned changes, timing, customer impact, and mitigation approach.

36. Describe compliance with accessibility standards, including WCAG 2.1 AA, Section 508, VPAT availability, accessibility testing, and usability validation practices.

37. Describe how accessibility is incorporated into clinical workflows, release governance, usability testing, product design, and continuous user experience improvements.

38. Describe your implementation methodology for a multi-facility state-operated healthcare environment, including timeline, sequencing, governance, and risk management.

39. Describe your data migration methodology, including scope, validation, historical conversion, and legacy system transition support.

40. Describe your training methodology, including role-based training, super-user programs, adoption strategies, and post-go-live support.

41. Based on organizations of similar size, census, and user complexity, what IT support staffing model do you recommend for successful long-term support of your platform? Please include recommended staffing roles, staffing ratios, operational responsibilities, and support structure considerations.

COST INFORMATIONAL FORM

1. Describe pricing model.

2. Identify cost components (licensing, implementation, interfaces, training, support and provide ballpark estimates.

3. Identify optional/modules/add-ons.

4. Describe post-go-live costs.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

1. Please provide input on alternative approaches or additional things to consider that might benefit the State.

2. Describe the AI architecture of your EHR platform, including whether it is built on AI-native architecture or relies on bolt-on AI capabilities, and identify the architectural components supporting AI inference, orchestration, data pipelines, semantic layers, and model lifecycle management. Include how this architecture supports behavioral health use cases such as risk identification, treatment planning, and clinical documentation.

3. Explain how AI interacts with core EHR data structures, including the mechanisms used for data ingestion, transformation, vectorization, and isolation, as well as the AI-specific security and governance controls applied to data used for AI. Include how behavioral health data (e.g., sensitive diagnoses, notes, and 42 CFR Part 2 data) is protected and appropriately segmented.

4. Does your platform support containerization to segment or isolate AI workloads and restrict AI access to specific modules or tasks, and if so, describe the supported containerization strategies. Include how this supports privacy, security, and controlled use of AI in behavioral health environments.

5. Describe how AI capabilities are embedded in the platform (native modules, microservices, APIs, model hosting, etc.) and how new AI components can be introduced without re-platforming. Include how AI capabilities are surfaced to clinicians in behavioral health workflows (e.g., documentation support, decision support, alerts, or insights) in a way that is actionable and does not disrupt care delivery.