(S02) D.2 Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity Redacted.pdf

VA-20-00045531

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: This proposed action is for the award of a firm-fixed-price task order (TO) issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the renewal of brand name Diameter Health, Inc. (DH) Data Quality Tool (DQT) solution comprised of software licenses, maintenance support, and brand name Amazon Web Services (AWS) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The VA Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has a requirement for the renewal of software licensing for Veteran Health Information Exchange (VHIE) which is capable of analyzing over 800,000 documents per month, operations services to include installation of updates or installs of new servers for capacity increases and monitoring, hosting, and support services for the deployed brand name DH DQT solution. This solution is used to analyze the quality of health documents exchanged with VA partners. The DQT solution, which includes its hosting environment, was granted an Authority to Operate (ATO) by the VA. The system is currently operating on contractor-provided IaaS within the AWS GovCloud as a Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) high risk system. The DQT is based on Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) software, specifically using the brand name DH CCD Analyzer software and the DH Fusion software. The renewal of the required software licenses shall include these DH software products, which are running in the current DQT solution. Additionally, for the base period only, there is also a requirement for the continued use of AWS GovCloud for the IaaS hosting platform. Offerors will be given the opportunity to propose an alternate IaaS solution for the option years.

The required support services include maintenance and technical support services, which include telephone and online technical support during standard business hours (Monday – Friday, 9 am – 5 pm ET), as well as maintenance releases, including all upgrades, updates and fixes, and software problem diagnosis and resolution. The brand name support and maintenance services required includes the installation of software updates and modification to the VA quality scoring rules. Also included is the installation of new or updated Fusion logic for industry issues, such as Opioid Use/Abuse and COVID-19. Additionally, the services include managing the performance of the system to meet the VA requirements for the daily high-volume data loading. Much of this work is specific to how VA uses these products and VA security requirements. The services also include security activities for monitoring of the system, investigating security scan findings, maintaining the security documentation, and training for software updates and Fusion logic.

Diameter Health Analyzer- DQ Tool VA-20-00045531

The total estimated value of the proposed action is inclusive of a 12-month base period and two 12-month option periods.

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(a)(4), the following brand name requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled “Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized”.

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, it was determined that only the brand name DH DQT solution noted above is capable of supporting the requirements of the VA.

This effort was originally competed in Fiscal Year 2017 as a brand name or equal requirement for the analyzing tool with hosting solution. Brand name DH Software and maintaining the AWS GovCloud was included as part of the solution proposed by the successful Offeror, and subsequently has been used by VA. Renewal of the proposed software solution is necessary to maintain the existing Health Information Exchange (HIE) environment that was specifically built and formatted to operate with the DQT product. The maintenance of the existing system is critical to support the high volume of documents expected, in light of business logic changes, from opt-in to opt-out and COVID-19 transactions. These interfaces are based on the proprietary DH application programing interface (API) included in this solution set that allows documents to be loaded immediately as opposed to manually loading documents into the Health Record. Specifically, to provide care for Veterans, the VA must send documents to and receive documents from various third-party care providers. The quality of the documents exchanged has a direct result on the cost and quality of Veterans’ care. These documents are based on industry standards developed by Health Level Seven and the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel. As such, without the required proprietary API, the interfaces developed would be useless, and VA would lose this critical functionality. No other source can provide this API without providing an entirely different solution. It would cost an estimated to replace the existing software tied to the current system interface. Further, it would take approximately 6 months to write the software as it would have to be customized specifically for the system to support VHIE leading to an additional to make these modifications which is based on previously priced contractual task support. These estimates are based on historical pricing. Additionally, it would take to achieve a security ATO for a replacement software package. Transition to a new solution would lead to loss of current stored data which would not be beneficial to the Government and would have unacceptable risks to the validation of health documents exchanged with VA partners.

Diameter Health Analyzer- DQ Tool VA-20-00045531

The DQT supports the VA’s effort to improve the quality of information provided by analyzing and validating the document’s syntactic structure and semantic meaning to determine both completeness and correctness. The solution has more than 2 million records and thousands of hours invested in modifying and/or adjusting the document quality/scoring rules to meet the specific needs of analyzing health records for the VA data exchange with the VA’s community care providers. If new software was incorporated, the Government, in conjunction with the vendor, will have to populate and validate a database of clinical scoring rules estimated at approximately of over in costs to complete these services, based on 2-3 FTEs of functional analyst support and Government time/validation support needs.

These costs, as well as the redevelopment of the existing software costs and the included ATO duplicative costs associated with procuring a new product and modifying the existing HIE environment, estimated at approximately , would exceed any value in recompeting as these costs would not be recouped through competition.

Additionally, as stated earlier, the DQT solution was granted an ATO by the VA for use on AWS GovCloud. No other solution, based on Market Research, currently has an ATO within the VA for this software solution. Based on historical information for another solution to go through the ATO accreditation process, it would take to achieve, assuming the other solution could meet all the required technical and functional requirements that the DQT solution provides. As no solution, other than the proposed DQT, has this critical accreditation, no other source, other than DH or its authorized resellers, can provide this requirement without an interruption to service to the Veteran. Due to the COVID-19 workload in the VA clinical environment the benefits of the DQ program which allow clinicians to handle the increased workload in response to the pandemic. It is critical to ensure continuous operations of the DQ program for VA to continue to make efficiency enhancements in the clinical environment and avoid repeated medical testing and manual validation of data.

Furthermore, the required maintenance and support services can only be provided by DH or its authorized resellers due to the proprietary nature of the product.

Specifically, the required maintenance services will include development of upgrades, fixes and patches to proprietary software. No source, other than the original software developer or its resellers has access to this proprietary code.

Patches or changes to the software provided by any other source could render the entire solutions useless. Therefore, these services must be provided by DH or its authorized resellers.

Failure to renew this effort as proposed will significantly impact the quality of care that VA can provide the Veteran. This system finds data interoperability problems that would otherwise cause VA clinicians to manually communicate to get clarifications about the data, which delays providing real time care, which can be critical in nature. Without a mechanism to automatically process this information, potential risk of having clinical care documents missing information or incorrect

Diameter Health Analyzer- DQ Tool VA-20-00045531

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the renewal of brand name Diameter Health, Inc. (DH) Data Quality Tool (DQT) solution comprised of software licenses, maintenance support, and brand name Amazon Web Services (AWS) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Advocate for Competition Technology Acquisition Center

Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics