Healthcare Communities Portal

Added: Jun 19, 2014 7:24 am The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid intends to award a sole source contract for the further development of the Knowledge Management System in support of the CMS Quality Improvement Organization's (QIO) 11th SOW Program to CSI Solutions, LLC.  Based on statutory language and the experience of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in administering the Program, CMS has identified the following requirements for the QIO Program:

• Improve quality of care for beneficiaries;
• Protect the integrity of the Medicare Trust Fund by ensuring that Medicare pays only for services and goods that are reasonable and medically necessary and that are provided in the most appropriate setting;
• Protect beneficiaries by expeditiously addressing individual complaints, such as beneficiary complaints; provider-based notice appeals; Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) violations; and other related statutory QIO responsibilities.

To assist QIOs in becoming more proactive and promoters of change, CMS seeks a knowledge/ content management system, for use by partner organizations, such as the QIOs, to improve health outcomes and build on strategic aims, including excellence in operations. The CMS has developed a Healthcare Communities Portal, which is a web-based knowledge/content management system built and managed through a contract with CSI Solutions, LLC. This tool offers some of the following features: a broad communication means for disseminating information, tools, and best practices from various collaborative activities; smaller learning communities for collaborating on a particular topic area, whether clinical, financial, and/or operational aspects of health care delivery; and, a results-sharing module that provides a web-based mechanism to distribute clinical and operational data on a voluntary basis and to enable automatic downloads of aggregate results. The QIOs will utilize the Healthcare Communities Portal to work amongst various communities nationally and locally, share best practices, communicate qualitative and quantitative results, and support expertise in data collection/analysis, education, and information exchange.

CSI Solutions, LLC is currently the system owner, creator and maintainer of hte Healthcare Communities Portal.  Specifically, CSI Solutions, LLC supports the ongoing day to day system maintenance, manage routine requests for modification of static content, executes quality control oversight of web content, performs web master functionality and manages virtual offices and list-servs for multiple customer groups.  This product is solde source for the following reasons:
1) Contractor is the only supplier able to perform technical assistance for the Healthcare Communities Portal.  As such, there are no ther alternatives to this contractor.  It would take substantial time and funding to develop another portal.
2) The contractor portal  is a proprietary platform and infastructure on which the Healthcare Communities Portal is based and the contractor will host the Portal.

This contract will be for a base year plus four (4) one (1) year option periods.

Interested parties may contract Christina Heller at Christina.Heller@cms.hhs.gov.