This is a Request for Information (RFI). This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this RFI is to obtain knowledge and information for project planning purposes. NOTE: This is a revision to a related posting, RFI 220237.  Please see the "related posting” which contains RFI 220237 and associated attachments.

BACKGROUND: CMS is the largest purchaser of health insurance in the United States.   CMS works to ensure high quality health care at a reasonable price and to provide information about benefits, health promotion, and choices. CMS is responsible for accurate, timely, relevant, understandable, and easily accessible information that will help individuals evaluate health plan options, nursing home options, and make decisions on their individual health care needs.

In order to meet national program missions and strategies as well as legislative mandates (Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and Medicare Modernization Act of 2003), CMS operates a toll-free, nation-wide, 24 x 7 contact center with multiple sites to provide customer service and address inquiries, which includes 1-800 MEDICARE. In addition to this, with new reform and regulations and with the advent of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), calls and inquiries may also include issues regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), consumer health choices or other Federal programs and Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) initiatives including the operation of a Federal Marketplace.

CMS’s Contact Center Customer Service (CCCS) objective is to establish a Contact Center Operations (CCO) environment that will provide customer service functions which are able to efficiently handle and answer inquiries with a high level of service across the United States and its territories. The operations include offering the same range of services and quality across multiple contact channels, such as telephone, mail, email, TDD/TTY, fax, and web chat, enabling multi-channel access.

CMS anticipates a full and open competition for the continued operation of its CCO environment. The applicable NAICs code is 561422, Telemarketing Bureaus and Other Contact Centers.

REVISED DRAFT SOLICITATION (RFI 220296): RFI 220237 (draft solicitation) was initially released for comment on January 26, 2021 in an attempt to improve the understanding of CMS’ CCO requirements, allow potential offerors to judge whether or how they can satisfy the Government's requirements, and to increase efficiency in proposal preparation, proposal evaluation, negotiation, and contract award.

CONTACT CENTER OPERATIONS (CCO) PRE-SOLICITATION VIRTUAL CONFERENCE was held on March 11, 2021 to provide a brief overview of the CCO program and to discuss CMS’s strategic direction in anticipation of releasing a final solicitation.  Additionally, CMS addressed several common themes that arose as a result of comments and questions received in response to the initial draft solicitation.

This exchange of information with industry has assisted CMS with identifying and resolving concerns regarding: the feasibility of the requirement, including performance requirements; evaluation criteria; the availability of reference documents; and, any other industry comments or questions concerning the CCO procurement.

CMS has utilized the comments and questions received from the initial draft solicitation and the pre-solicitation conference to make further revisions to the draft solicitation (see attached).   Additionally, CMS has attached questions and answers generated as a result of this request for information.  NOTE: Only questions that were not resolved in the revised draft solicitation material or addressed in the pre-solicitation conference are attached (See Attachment J-13).  

CMS would like to highlight the following areas that were of particular interest or where potentially impactful changes were made:

1. Potential offerors should be aware of the recent executive order to raise the Federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.  It is anticipated that this executive order will apply to this solicitation and resulting contract.
2. Draft RFP Sections L.13 and M.4, Criterion A: Corporate Experience, has been updated to remove the call volume requirement of 20 million inbound calls.
3. Removed the language in J-4, Statement of Work, Section 8 Facilities, which specifically encourages contractors to ensure sites and staffing are in locations that are competitive wage determinations and are beneficial to the Government (i.e. “The contractor shall ensure sites and staffing are in locations with competitive wage determinations as to be beneficial to the Government.”
4. Additional language was added to Attachment J-4, Statement of Work, Section 8 Facilities, to reinforce the requirement that all work performed on this contract must be conducted in the United States.

See also RFP 75FCMC21R0013 which was posted on 06/28/2021.