DMLSS-W Medi-Span FY24 JA (002) (Redacted).pdf

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DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

DLA CONTRACTING SERVICES OFFICE - PHILADELPHIA

700 ROBBINS AVENUE

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA 19111-5092

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JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL

FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

Upon the basis of the following justification, I hereby approve the issuance of the contractual action described below using other than full and open competition, pursuant to the authority cited herein.

1. IDENTIFICATION OF THE REQUIRING AGENCY AND CONTRACTING

ACTIVITY

Agency Requiring Activity

Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)

Medical Directorate

700 Robbins Avenue

Philadelphia, PA 19111

POC: Linda Stipa

(215) 737-2174

E-Mail: Linda.Stipa@dla.mil

Contracting Activity

DLA Contracting Services Office at Philadelphia (DCSO-P)

700 Robbins Avenue

Philadelphia, PA 19111

2. NATURE AND/OR DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTION BEING APPROVED.

Pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1) and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-

1(a)(2)(iii)(A), this justification for other than full and open competition authorizes and approves the procurement of a sole source/brand name pharmaceutical product pricing data subscription for use at DLA Troop Support Medical Directorate supporting the

Medical Master Catalog (MMC). The required subscription is for the Medi-Span

Electronic Drug File™ (MED-File) v2, formerly known as (f/k/a) the Master Drug Data

Base (MDDB)™, a product of Medi-Span®, which is a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, for a period of 12 months plus two 12-month option terms under a Firm Fixed Price contract.

mailto:Linda.Stipa@dla.mil

Justification and Approval for Other than Full and Open Competition

Title of Acquisition

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3. A DESCRIPTION OF THE SUPPLIES OR SERVICES REQUIRED TO MEET

THE AGENCY’S NEEDS (INCLUDING THE ESTIMATED VALUE).

The DLA Troop Support Medical Directorate has a requirement to renew its existing

MED-File data subscription, which data feed populates pharmaceutical data, most specifically the Average Wholesale Price (AWP), used in many Defense Medical

Logistics Standard Support-Wholesale (DMLSS-W) applications, including the

Distribution and Pricing Agreement (DAPA) Management System (DMS), Prime Vendor

Data Interface (PDI), Corporate Data for Medical Intelligence Applications (CDMIA), the Product Data Bank (PDB) and pharmacy catalog components in the MMC.

The estimated dollar value for this procurement for a base year data subscription with two

12-month option terms is $147,674.00:

Contract Year Period of Performance Contract Cost

Base Year 10/01/2023 - 09/30/2024

Option Year 1 10/01/2024 - 09/30/2025

Option Year 2 10/01/2025 - 09/30/2026

Total

4. IDENTIFICATION OF THE STATUTORY AUTHORITY PERMITTING

OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION.

The statutory authorities permitting other than full and open competition are 10 U.S.C.

3204(a)(1) and FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(iii)(A): The supplies required by the requiring agency are available from only one or a limited number of responsible sources, and no other type of supplies will satisfy agency requirements. The MED-File data is deemed to be available only from the original source in the case of this follow-on pharmaceutical product data subscription contract for the continued provision of highly specialized data feeds, because it is likely that award to any other source would result in substantial duplication of cost to the Government that is not expected to be recovered through competition, due to higher reprogramming labor costs as well as the potential for higher data subscription costs.

5. DEMONSTRATION THAT THE PROPOSED CONTRACTOR’S UNIQUE

QUALIFICATIONS OR THE NATURE OF THE ACQUISITION REQUIRES

USE OF THE AUTHORITY CITED.

The follow-on nature of the requirement for renewal of the expiring pharmaceutical data subscription that comprises critical data feeds for so many DMLSS-W processes necessitates the use of the authority cited above. The logistics and acquisition communities rely on DMLSS-W system functionalities on a daily basis. The Average

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Wholesale Price (AWP) provided in the Medi-Span Electronic Drug File™ (MED-File) v2 is a critical component in all the referenced DMLSS-W applications used to negotiate the most favorable pharmaceutical pricing available with DoD suppliers and acquire pharmaceutical products under the best federal pricing. The MED-File data feed is required to be updated on a weekly basis, and the DMLSS-W applications all have program code to incorporate the data elements of the incumbent MED-File data feed as part of their build sequences for both back-end data bases and front-end graphical user interfaces. Another pharmaceutical data subscription with the AWP is available, but analysis has found the file content and data does not suit the DMLSS-W application requirements. Each application would incur analyst and developer labor costs for redesign and recoding a different file format, even if the decision was made to utilize the sub-optimal competitor’s product. There are no budget or business approvals for reengineering the data feeds.

6. DESCRIPTION OF EFFORTS MADE TO ENSURE THAT OFFERS ARE

SOLICITED FROM AS MANY POTENTIAL SOURCES AS IS

PRACTICABLE, INCLUDING WHETHER A NOTICE WAS OR WILL BE

PUBLICIZED AS REQUIRED BY SUBPART 5.2 AND, IF NOT, WHICH

EXCEPTION UNDER 5.202 APPLIES.

In accordance with FAR 5.201(b)(1), a synopsis will be posted to SAM.gov to provide all commercial entities an opportunity to submit proposals for this requirement.

7. DETERMINATION BY THE CONTRACTING OFFICER THAT THE

ANTICIPATED COST TO THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE FAIR AND

REASONABLE.

As the Contracting Officer, I hereby determine that pricing will be fair and reasonable based on a pricing analysis in accordance with FAR 15.404-1. It is anticipated that the

Government will perform a comparison of the proposed price with prices charged to the third-party contractor previously responsible for pharmaceutical data that comprises critical data feeds for the Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support-Wholesale

(DMLSS-W) applications, as well as a comparison to other data subscription providers.

8. DESCRIPTION OF THE MARKET RESEARCH CONDUCTED (SEE PART

10) AND THE RESULTS OR A STATEMENT OF THE REASON MARKET

RESEARCH WAS NOT CONDUCTED.

The DLA Medical Directorate conducted Market Research to compare service offerings of the incumbent vendor (Wolters Kluwer) with alternative solutions existing in the industry. Market Research techniques included a review of Acquisition History for contracts used by the directorate to procure similar services and searching the beta.SAM.gov and GSA websites for other vendors with similar data service offerings.

Primary comparative factors used to analyze alternatives included technical service offerings, functional familiarity, and cost to the Medical Directorate.

http://farsite.hill.af.mil/reghtml/regs/far2afmcfars/fardfars/far/05.htm#P56_9614 http://farsite.hill.af.mil/reghtml/regs/far2afmcfars/fardfars/far/05.htm#P67_10773

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Alternative subscription services considered were IQVIA and First Databank (FDB).

Results of market research conducted were as follows:

Medi-Span, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health: (http://www.wolterskluwercdi.com/)

Medi-Span Electronic Drug File™ (MED-File) v2, f/k/a the Master Drug Data Base

(MDDB)™: (Incumbent product)

Medi-Span was acquired by Wolters Kluwer Health and has more than 30 years’ experience in authoritative drug databases. The Medi-Span Electronic Drug File v2 includes a codified drug dictionary, drug vocabulary, and drug pricing for prescription drugs and medication-based over-the-counter products in the United States. Daily updates are available, as well as daily and monthly deliveries. DMLSS-W receives a weekly file with the following elements:

• Product names

• Dose form

• Route of administration

• Strength

• Proprietary drug identifiers, including Generic Product Identifier (GPI), Drug

Descriptor Identifier (DDID) and the Generic product Packaging Code (GPPC)

• Pricing files o Average Wholesale Price (AWP) o Wholesale Acquisition Price (WAC) o Direct Price (DP) o Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Federal Upper Limit (CMS

FUL)

o Average Average Wholesale Price

(AAWP)

o Generic Equivalent Average Price (GEAP)

• Ingredients

• Name-based concepts and alternative names at multiple levels of specificity

• Data Definition Language (DDL) to facilitate table creation during development

DMLSS-W benefits not only from the AWP data field critical to some many of its applications, but also by increasing systems efficiencies by having access to automated pricing information and simplifying generic product substitution processes. (Medi-Span Electronic Drug File (MED-File) v2)

IQVIA: (https://www.iqvia.com)

IQVIA Health Hospital Supply Index provides product data from more than 500 indirect and direct sales data sources, and specializes in pharmaceutical prescription data collection. The Index also reports on the sales of 550,000 medical/surgical supply products via a database analysis tool with 6 years of trending information.

DLA Troop Support Medical Directorate currently receives IQVIA Pharmaceutical Sales

Data, Relational Data Models for Pharmaceutical Sales Data and for Medical/Surgical

Sales Data, Medical/Surgical Synonym Files, and Package Allocations for http://www.wolterskluwercdi.com/ http://www.medispan.com/ https://www.iqvia.com/

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Medical/Surgical Data, on a quarterly basis and a Comprehensive Data Dictionary on an annual basis under its current annual subscription. Current costs are: $2,029,216.00.

Although the IQVIA tool provides a number of valuable components of

Pharmaceutical/Medical Surgical data, it does not offer the specific data attributes that are necessary by the MMC and PDB to meet the government’s requirement for data associations, classifications and synchronizations that are clinically vetted.

First Databank (FDB): (www.fdbhealth.com)

FDB publishes several drug pricing data fields in its data subscription, including Average

Acquisition Cost (AAC), Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC), Direct Price (DP), Suggested Wholesale Price (SWP), Federal Financing Participation Upper Limits

(FFPUL), and National Average Drug Acquisition Costs (NADAC), in addition to clinical drug information. FDB discontinued the publication of Blue Book AWP in

September 2011, which resulted in DMLSS-W having to find an alternate source for this critical element to satisfy DMLSS-W application programming code. (Drug Pricing

Policy)

DMLSS-W currently subscribes to FDB MedKnowledge, Enhanced Package, under

SP4701-20-C-0037, that fulfills foundational DMLSS-W application programming code requirements.

9. ANY OTHER FACTS SUPPORTING THE USE OF OTHER THAN FULL

AND OPEN COMPETITION

There are no budget or business approvals for reengineering the data feed.

N/A.

10. LISTING OF THE SOURCES, IF ANY, THAT EXPRESSED, IN WRITING,

AN INTEREST IN THE ACQUISITION.

Wolters Kluwer Health

11. A STATEMENT OF THE ACTIONS, IF ANY, THE AGENCY MAY TAKE

TO REMOVE OR OVERCOME ANY BARRIERS TO COMPETITION

BEFORE ANY SUBSEQUENT ACQUISITION FOR THE SUPPLIES OR

SERVICES REQUIRED.

At this time, Medi-Span is the only products services that will support DLA’s requirements and meet the Government’s needs. However, DLA has exercised, and continues to exercise, competition as often as possible and is required to conduct ongoing reviews to keep abreast of new technology, both in industry and the

Government. As a continuing effort, DLA utilizes a variety of vendors, manufacturers, http://www.fdbhealth.com/ http://www.fdbhealth.com/ http://www.fdbhealth.com/

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and contracts to fulfill its requirements and will continue the practice of surveying the market to ensure full and open competition to the maximum extent practicable.

12. CONTRACTING OFFICER CERTIFICATION THAT THE JUSTIFICATION

IS ACCURATE AND COMPLETE TO THE BEST OF THE CONTRACTING

OFFICER’S KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF.

Technical and Requirements Certification

I hereby certify that the supporting data provided for which I am responsible and which form a basis for this justification are complete and accurate:

Date

I hereby certify that the information contained in this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date

Contracting Officer