SOLICITATION NOTICE
R -- Evidence-based Practice Centers
- Notice Date
- 3/8/2007
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- NAICS
- 541611
— Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Contracts Management, 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD, 20850, UNITED STATES
- ZIP Code
- 00000
- Solicitation Number
- AHRQ-07-10021
- Archive Date
- 5/30/2007
- Description
- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is soliciting proposals for multiple contracts to continue the work and expand the impact of the AHRQ Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPC) Program. Work required under this contract will be obtained on an as-needed basis through issuances of Task Orders. These contracts are for a 2 year base period. There will also be 3 one-year option periods which may or may not be exercised based on performance of the contractor and the needs of the Government (as well as other factors) upon completion of the base period. The ultimate goal of the EPC Program is to present the ?state of the science? on a given topic in a manner that can be directly applied to healthcare decisions made by clinicians, patients, policy-makers, and payers. Decisions may be made at the individual, group or organizational level. Topics are expected to cover all health care clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic areas, including prevention. The EPCs will provide a variety of services and products, including the development of evidence reports, comparative and effectiveness reviews, and technology assessments. These are systematic reviews based on rigorous, comprehensive syntheses and analyses of relevant scientific literature, emphasizing explicitly detailed documentation of methods rationale and assumptions. The EPCs are to be comprised of core staff of seasoned professionals in fields such as medicine, pharmacy, nursing, dentistry, epidemiology, statistics and data analysis, health services research, behavioral research, public health, social sciences, library science, and science writing and editing. Key personnel who are constant across EPC projects should include an EPC Director, EPC Associate Director and Project Manager. Individual projects will add other investigators, who will apply their scientific and content expertise in conducting systematic review methodology and managing the progress of systematic reviews. In addition, it expected that there will be ready access to expert individuals who can serve in Librarian, Statistician/Data analyst, and Editor roles. Multiple task order driven contracts are anticipated for base funding and potential supplemental funding. EPC work will likely focus on systematic review efforts on one of three threes areas for base funding: 1.) technology assessments that concentrate on specific technologies as requested by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Technology Assessment (TA) Program; 2.) evidence reviews on preventative topics for the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) Program and 3. evidence reports on a variety of topics in collaboration with private partners within the Generalist Program. It is anticipated that the number of EPCs assigned to a particular focus may differ from past experience and the work from each program will not be reserved exclusively for the designated EPCs. Some work in each program will be reserved for possible assignment to EPCs across the Program. An additional focus for assignment to one EPC will be as a Scientific Resource Center (SRC) to provide scientific and methodologic technical support to the Generalist Program and MMA 1013 Projects (described subsequently), including the DEcIDE Network. To avoid potential or perceived conflicts of interest, the SRC will not be assigned to Generalist Program or MMA 1013 systematic reviews. The SRC may also be assigned to work in the USPSTF or TA Programs. In addition to base funding, supplementary resources may be applied to EPC work. It is anticipated that, as in the past, supplemental resources will be available for additional EPC work in future years. For example: comparative and effectiveness reviews (CERs) are funded under MMA Section 1013. CERs focus on outcomes, comparative clinical effectiveness, and appropriateness of pharmaceuticals, devices, and health care services. Research is informed by the needs of the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP. Another example: efforts with Federal Partners produce systematic reviews to inform policy and/or research agenda. In this approach, AHRQ acts as a science partner through the EPC to produce evidence reviews for panels making recommendations, to develop research agendas and to build coalitions of interest in advancing the science in a focused area research. Task orders may address a variety of assignments and may include brief as well as comprehensive systematic review or methodologic projects, depending on the current needs of the program. The assignments will likely have tight and/or overlapping deadlines by which specific products will be required, and duration of individual Task Orders may vary. EPCs also will be expected to have the methodological competence and management flexibility to satisfy a range of solo and multiple tasks that need to be performed concurrently. Topics of task orders are expected to cover all health care clinical, diagnostic, and therapeutic areas of focus. Clinical areas may focus on traditional therapeutics as well as complementary, alternative, nutritional, and other emerging areas such as genomics. Topics may also include a focus on implementation, delivery and systems of care, effectiveness and efficiency of health care and the group or organizational unit of analysis. EPCs will a.) conduct rigorous systematic reviews of relevant scientific literature. Systematic reviews will implement methods for general evidence reports, effectiveness reviews, technology assessments, comparative reviews, systematic review updates and other substantive reports of evidence to be developed during the course of the contract; b.) Synthesize results of systematic reviews and report the findings with high transparency; i.e., explicitly detailed methods, rationales, and assumptions in a format(s) appropriate to the topic and intended audience; c.) Advance the methodology of systematic review in organized projects which include detailed and descriptive reports; d.) Collaborate with partners, including other EPCs and AHRQ programs, to promote relevant, consistent, transparent and valuable implementation of the systematic review process, dissemination of findings from systematic reviews and methodology projects, and the EPC Program as a whole. In addition, an EPC may be assigned related tasks such as a.) Perform special analyses, such as meta-analyses, cost effectiveness analyses, decision analyses, individual patient-level data analysis; e) Collaborate with public and private partners in specific educational or training projects; for example, developing evidence-based curricula, providing training opportunities in systematic reviews, or in conducting educational sessions on interpretation and understanding of research studies; f.) Collaborate with other programs within AHRQ and the Federal government, where a systematic review may be supportive of that program mission; g.) Provide technical assistance to organizations that seek to use EPC reports as a basis for decision-making; for example, producing tools to enhance the quality and effectiveness of patient care, etc.; and/or h.) Contribute to efforts to develop relevant topics for systematic review; for example, scan published and grey literature; interact with partners regarding practices needing a summary of the evidence-base, etc. AHRQ anticipates multiple contract awards (12-15). The solicitation and any documents relating to this requirement will only be available by downloading from the Internet through www.fedbizopps.gov or through the AHRQ website at www.ahrq.gov. Potential offerors are responsible to monitor these sites for the release of the solicitation and any subsequent amendments. It is anticipated that the solicitation will be available for downloading on or about March 23, 2007.
- Record
- SN01246465-W 20070310/070308220427 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
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FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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