Beneficiary and Family Centered Care (BFCC) National Coordinating Center (NCC)

This notice serves to inform industry that CMS intends to release a solicitation that will pertain specifically to BFCC NCC work.

The purpose of this work is to establish a National Coordinating Center (NCC) to support the Beneficiary-and Family-Centered Care (BFCC) provisions of the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) Program. The Beneficiary and Family Centered Care National Coordinating Center (BFCC NCC) supports the work of Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) as they work to improve the quality of care available to Medicare beneficiaries in the U.S. health care system. QIOs, and by extension, the BFCC NCC, do this in a manner that aligns with the work that Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) does in its efforts towards achieving the goals of the National Quality Strategy (NQS) and the CMS Quality Strategy along with the other strategies, goals, recommendations, and priorities listed in this Statement of Work. Specifically, the BFCC NCC shall work with BFCC-QIOs to improve healthcare services for Medicare beneficiaries by coordinating numerous statutory review functions, including but not limited to, quality of care reviews, beneficiary complaint reviews, discharge and termination of service appeals in various provider settings, medical necessity reviews, and Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) reviews.

The BFCC NCC solicitation, once issued, will comply with all applicable statute and regulations associated with the criteria contractors must meet in order to win a BFCC NCC contract award.

In accordance with FAR 5.203, CMS hereby notifies industry of its intent solicit for this requirement under full and open competition and plans to publish this solicitation to the FedBizOpps.gov website on or about March 14, 2014.

CMS anticipates issuance of a single Cost-Plus-Fixed-Fee (CPFF) type contract under the forthcoming solicitation.

Important: CMS anticipates that certain contracts awarded under potential solicitations for the QIO Program will be cost-reimbursement type contracts. Therefore, in accordance with FAR 16.301-3, offerors must have an accounting system that has been deemed adequate for determining applicable costs prior to contract award. Further, in accordance with FAR 42.302(a)(12), contractor's accounting systems should remain adequate during the entire period of contract performance. (This applies to cost-reimbursement contracts.) This requirement flows down to any proposed subcontractor for cost-reimbursement services.

Businesses, both large and small, who are interested in teaming or subcontracting on this work, should add its information to the interested vendors list on the FedBizOpps posting relative to this effort.