Strengthening Public Health Incident Management Through Continuous Quality Improvement

This fixed-price contract action was awarded on a sole-source basis pursuant to FAR 6.302-1: Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

Through the Incident Management Systems (IMS) Measures Project, Contract# 75D301-18-C-03556, The RAND Corporation developed draft metrics for assessing efficiency/effectiveness of important elements of emergency response operations. In the first phase of the project, a conceptual framework was developed that can be used as an initial basis for understanding incident management systems and, ultimately, improving how we measure performance and effectiveness of the management of public health-related incidents. This framework is comprised of twenty-three measurement constructs (e.g. related to situation awareness, resource management and mobilization, incident action and implementation planning) and is based on findings in the scientific literature, best practices in the field, and input from emergency/incident management subject matter experts from state/local/federal government agencies and academia. Based on this information, a draft set of IMS metrics were developed and reviewed by the same subject matter experts and RAND is currently recruiting approximately 10 health departments to participate in pilot testing during COVID response efforts. RAND also developed a user toolkit (includes protocols for data collection) to support implementation of the metrics at health departments.

The new project will continue the work begun through the IMS Measures Project and will address two questions: 1) to what extent are these measures feasible for use during COVID and other public health emergencies, and 2) in which response contexts are the measures most useful (e.g. are there specific response or health department characteristics, such as jurisdiction size or geographic setting, in which the metrics support continuous quality improvement than others).

The objective of this contract is to test a set of valid, feasible, and useful measures for evaluating performance and effectiveness of incident management throughout response operations in COVID and other health-related incidents. These measures aim to facilitate improvements in incident management at all levels across a variety of different state, local, territorial, and tribal health departments across the country.

Awarded contract 75D301-21-C-11807 to RAND CORPORATION, THE for 809827.00 on 2021-09-10.