RFP S-44300-00010245 Pre-Proposal Conference- Presentation Transcript.pdf

5774- RFP S-44300-00010245 RFP Laboratory Billing and Collection Services Pre-Proposal Conference Meeting Transcript (Presentation)

5774- RFP S-44300-00010245 RFP Laboratory Billing and Collection Services Pre-Proposal Conference Meeting Transcript (Presentation)

October 22, 2025, 9:00AM Meeting Duration: 26m 51s

Note: Q&A portion has been redacted from the recording. Formal answers to the questions will be published and associated with the RFP.

Rodriguez Enrique G Alrighty, so welcome.

This is the basically that what you're seeing on the screen right now is the agenda for the RFP that is out right now. The laboratory and collection services.

It is.

This is the pre proposal conference and basically just can start really quick.

I am Enrique Rodriguez from the procurement and contract specialist assigned to this opportunity.

If we could do a brief introduction of probably just me and you, Sarah, we're the other ones we'd be talking, so.

Sarah King M That's fine, sure.

Hi, my name is Sarah King.

I serve as the Client Services Coordinator for the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory.

I've been in this role for about 12 years and serve as the contract administrator for the resulting, for the current contract for these services, as well as anticipate serving as the contract administrator for the resulting contract from this RFP.

And serve in many other roles, wear many other hats in my role at the laboratory as well.

Rodriguez Enrique G Alrighty. Thank you, Sarah.

Just a quick housekeeping tips and guidelines here.

Participation is voluntary at this pre-proposal conference, but we're very happy to have people attend. All verbal statements made today are not binding. However, I am free to if there's clarifications like a particular section I can reference to existing written content that is considered part of the official record because I'm referring to actual language and content in there. So I'm very happy to directly answer those questions.

All questions during the conference must be submitted via Microsoft Teams chat.

The reason that we do that is we want to make sure we have a written record and we respond exactly to the question that is being asked.

The questions that are submitted via the chat we're going to try to address.

If it's not a clarification, if it's a question that we need to look up and try to answer, we will do that. After the meeting, we'll provide a summary, basically an answer statement and everything else afterwards.

This is the pre-proposal conference. Basically, the purpose of this conference is to provide an overview of the project and explain the RFP process and allow proposers to submit related questions.

Sarah, if you could take advantage of and talk more about the project overview and background.

Sarah King M Absolutely. So I'll start with the laboratory as a whole.

So the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory is a statutorily mandated program within the State of Oregon under the Oregon Health Authority, and then further under the Public Health Division. Our laboratory has served Oregon since 1903 and currently supports infectious disease control and testing newborn bloodspot screening and laboratory compliance.

In other states, if you're familiar with those other states’ public health laboratories, they may serve other testing functions. Those testing functions happen in other departments in our state.

Our laboratory currently lacks in-house billing, collection and revenue cycle management expertise. So our current contractor processes an average of about 8600 claims per month. And of these, about 45% are currently filtered out as non billable using our billing rules structure and are therefore reported to the laboratory on monthly reports. About 16% are billed to public and private payers and about 39% are invoiced to the submitters of specimens to our laboratories or facilities or hospitals, clinics, etc. These percentages are indeed subject to change based on various factors, including but not limited to, funding structures and policy and procedure decisions.

The primary goals of this RFP are to secure a contractor to manage claims and billing, submission, rejection and denial management, rebilling when appropriate, payment posting, status reporting to our laboratory, customer service, and compliance. And this contract will also support potential future growth in our claims management, and then potentially payer billing and data system transitions when needed.

So if we get into the, do you want me to move forward, Enrique into scope of services?

Rodriguez Enrique G Please.

Sarah King M Great, The scope of services is separated into different phases of this implementation and ongoing services. So you will notice and may have already noticed that the first section is implementation, planning and testing. And so this is the section where we are building all of our systems. So our chosen proposer will configure these systems build all of the billing rules, test file transfers establish payer connections.

We will develop our invoice formats for those entities that submit specimens to us for which we need to submit invoices to them, build those report formats for status updates to our laboratory and ensure all elements are in place for operationalizing the services. We will build defect tracking, categorization, and resolution and we'll put all of that into place. And we may have some transition activities from the current contractor to the chosen proposer. And services need to be operational by May 29th, 2026.

Then we'll move into our stabilization period where all services are operational and the transition to our chosen proposer has taken place. We will be in a close monitoring phase and change management and communication with us and our submitters will be ongoing while we ensure that everything is well in place to make sure we can move on to ongoing services where we can ensure that everything is make sure that everything's more stable.

So again, ongoing services, everything is operational. We are more confident that we are in kind of that smooth ceiling phase billing to all of the appropriate payers is in place, including Medicaid, Medicare CCO's which are Oregon's Medicaid version of managed care, kind of. Private insurers and submitters. We're ensuring that clean claims are being submitted. We're receiving monthly reports. Customer services are being provided to our submitters appropriately and more

So, ensure that you please review that RFP document for all those details required to operationalize those services.

In addition, for each period key persons intended to staff the project are defined within the Request for Proposals. So during the contract period, we do anticipate also changing laboratory information management systems and that could change the format of the files transmitted to the chosen proposer and could require some restructuring of the file format that is sent to our chosen vendor at that time.

We anticipate that will be about at least, let me think, doing math a year or more away, probably, maybe even 2.

Optional within this RFP is medical billing consultation. We are seeking support for CPT code reviews, Denial analysis and CPT coding support for new test methods.

That is an optional service within this RFP.

That's a high-level overview. Of course, there are plenty more details within the documents themselves. Enrique, back to you.

Rodriguez Enrique G Alright, you know, thank you very much.

So the next part is RFP process overview.

So the key dates and deadlines proposals are due November 14th, 2025 at 3:00 PM.

The submission of proposals is gonna be via Oregon Byes and PDF, Word or Excel format within that. It's important to include all the required attachments which are gonna be C through G. And I'll talk more. I'll bring up the RFP soon and kind of go through a little bit of that. Evaluation will occur in two rounds. Round one will be the technical proposal. Round two is going to include price as well as to be determined references, interviews. other components that you know we would see as a as a need for the next round two.

Agencies may establish a competitive range and conduct additional rounds, which is what I was talking about Round 2 and so forth, and very important that questions, besides having the opportunity now as part of the pre-proposal conference, to submit questions. The last chance to submit questions is going to be October 29th and then of which there are available protest periods that follow after that. The protest periods are intended to allow a chance to address anything that might stand out that maybe wasn't addressed by questions all that is part of the RFP.

Now of that, let me stop sharing really quick as I bring up the Oregon.

Or actually let me see if I can do that. So many screens that are open there we go.

So for folks that have already been invited, this is pretty much what they're going to be seeing. This is the OregonBuys posting. These are the documents that are associated with it. Just going down the RFP is the very first one. That's the main document here.

There's also folks get to know what the sample contract looks like with our standard terms and conditions are as they relate to this particular project. As well as mentioned before, let me move this over.

There are various attachments that are in the RFP itself, some that were too big to kind of put in there, are attachments H through L which represent the different examples as stated here. Oregon Statement Standards, billing file list of headers, examples of Oregon State Health Lab location categories, as well as CPT charges, examples of CPT charges by y category, and finally billing rules. So these are all available. I didn't think I would need to click on those. Those are available to see. If there are any questions related to that, feel free to provide any, you know, questions via chat.

Also wanted to bring up the RFP itself. Hopefully folks have had a chance to look at that and let me enlarge it a little bit.

And really, the key elements besides that this was issued on the 17th, the closing date is November 14th as mentioned at 3:00 PM.

My contact information is right there. Table of contents directs you to all the appropriate sections. Round one, round two. Hold on real quick here. I oh proposal modification and withdraws, proposals due wanted to look at. OK. Lot of information.

Here's an example, for example of the attachments and everything that is there related to the numbers of where they're located. So if you click on. do a control and then you click on it will take you to directly there.

One of the key areas that I wanted to also bring up is this timetable. Today, of course, is the voluntary pre-proposal conference. Questions and answers officially end at October 29th. We hope to have the answers to those questions. By the 31st and then of course there are, as mentioned, related protest periods, closing dates and then ongoing, potentially around 2 demonstrations, interviews of which will be followed to be determined as needed. The intent to award, which then has another protest period associated with that as well.

In my history, I usually don't get any protests. We usually try to resolve any kind of questions or issues via the question and answer period. Feel free to reach out to me as mentioned up here. In regards to any issues of clarification or issues, if something doesn't, if you can't seem to find something I am more than happy to help guide folks into the right sections, written expectations, requirements, and so forth.

OK, of that. Let me go back real quick here. Oops, I remember which one I have open. So we're making very good time of everything. Mentioned everything as needed in #5. If there are no questions on that part, are there any general questions?

This is where we open the floor up to general questions not previously addressed.

Hopefully submitted via chat. I don't see anything in the chat right now. Stopping that up real quick and a reminder that verbal responses, if we were to provide any, are not binding, we need to provide a full assessment, basically back on the 31st of a response to anything that is need, anything that we can it all answers to questions need to be done in our response back on the by the 30 after the 31st or sorry on the 31st, excuse me. Any questions?

Rodriguez Enrique G Alrighty, thank you very much.

I'm just gonna go through a quick closing part real quick here.

Please note that all proposals are to be submitted to OregonBuys by November 14th, 2025 at 3:00 PM. If you have any questions, I am your single point of contact, so reach out to me anytime if I can clarify something. I am more than willing to do that, even after the question period. So clarifications are just you know this form I'm having problems with OregonBuys, things like straightforward like that.

Other than that, I wanted to say thank you to everybody that participated in this opportunity and look forward to reviewing your proposal.