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CDC has previously obtained support in this area using a contract with ASN (200- 2016-88832) which has yielded the development of training materials and infection prevention-focused webpages on the ASN website, a Targeting Zero Infections webinar series, live educational sessions during ASN Kidney Week (the society's annual educational conference), and a variety of publications and regular social media messaging which has pushed forward engaging strong nephrologist leaders to cultivate a climate that improves patient safety by preventing infections. ASN has also created a Nephrology Community which was brought together to implement infection prevention and describe best practices. This community represents a great resource for CDC identifying barriers and facilitators to adherence to CDC- recommended infection prevention practices. Developing a new community to carry forward educational direction efforts through a new vendor would be impossible to do without significant loss of momentum created over the past 3 years under the previous contract.
ASN has created a Nephrology Community which was brought together under the previous requirement Task 3 to implement infection prevention and describe best practices. This community represents a great resource for CDC in identifying barriers and facilitators to adherence to CDC-recommended infection prevention practices.
ASN is qualified to fulfill this requirement because they have been providing this same level and type of service for three years under contract 200-2016-88832 and as such, has the logical follow on experience needed to carry government work forward without interruption or delay.
ASN is uniquely qualified to fulfill this requirement as they have the rare and unique combination of specific subject matter expertise required in dialysis, nephrology, human factors engineering, and education along with the fully unique access and respect from the nephrology community leaders needed to advise the CDC on best practices and create the tools needed to respond to areas for improvement previously identified under contract 200-2016-88832 and laid out in this requirement. No other vendor has access to this committee and these experts. Any other vendor would have to recreate this resource causing CDC to lose momentum on these efforts and not meet the aggressive timeline requested here.
For the previous three years, ASN has been contributing to the public health objectives of the Dialysis team in the Prevention and Response Branch by providing ongoing access to a community of experts in the field who are looking across all disciplines together to identify what is needed to protect dialysis patients. ASN has combined expertise from front line nurses, infection prevention physicians, dialysis technicians, hepatologists, and other subject matter experts together and allowed CDC to hear their thoughts on best guiding practices in this arena. The outcome of that has been honing in on our next steps in this area as laid out specifically in these new tasks.
Task 1 of this new requirement specifically requires a human factors engineering approach to barriers assessments. ASN has performed 6 of these under contract 200-2016-88832 and has created a new resource under that requirement of an engineering team with dialysis specific knowledge. That resource of dialysis knowledgeable engineers does not exist outside of this team which was trained under ASN to perform this function specifically under the existing award, and a logical follow on would be to continue with this vendor for 4 more assessments requested here. Also, in so doing, the vendor will be able to provide a higher power of an overall recommendation based on all 10 visits total as opposed to only having knowledge of the 4 required as part of this contractual work. For a new vendor to try to accomplish this, new engineers would have to be located and trained on dialysis issues from scratch which is not in the government's best interest.
We are now three years involved in these targeted efforts with ASN through 200- 2016-88832 and request logical follow on of this specific and well defined deliverable based work which relies heavily on the three years of government investment obtained through the completed work under 200-2016-88832.
The requirement Statement of Work specifies significant vendor experience and knowledge as follows:
1. Vendor must have existing relationship with Human Factors Engineering (HFE) experts available or identified who also have relevant training and understanding of the field of dialysis and nephrology.
2. Vendor must have access to and existing relationships with Nephrology experts as identified in Task 2 in order to be able to successfully and quickly create required advisory committee.
ASN has this and has this uniquely due to their unique space in the Nephrology community and their work on the previous requirement.
Having to work with a new vendor for this work would provide a hardship to the program and significant time, momentum, and financial loss to the program.
Continuing this work with the same knowledge level of subject matter would not be possible with any other known vendor.
Because the vendor is completing three full years of work with our program in this area, the vendor uniquely and fully understands and supports our public health program. This work requires a demonstrated public health knowledge, demonstrated ability to find and recruit experts, demonstrated ability to obtain HFE services in the unique dialysis space, and a demonstrated ability to obtain and retain credibility with key nephrologists in the dialysis community. What ASN offers with specific key-lock experience in the relevant sciences and public health communications fields from a practical and technical standpoint is essential to support this particular and specific deliverable based requirement.
This new work is similar though far more specific and defined to existing and ongoing award 200-2016-88832 making the follow-on logical because the required services for the effort follow on and leverage the previous work and partnerships in the dialysis subject matter area. The follow-on effort will accelerate the work. Historical knowledge and momentum would be quickly lost with significant overall expense to the government with interruption to service through a vendor change. Support of these established relationships in a continuous fashion is critical to avoid a very significant loss to the federal government.
No other vendor has the knowledge and experience and expertise in this area to carry forward the work in the same manner. It is imperative that work proceed without gap or change in vendor as these critical analysis services are informing our infection prevention efforts in the dialysis community in support of the health of the general public and have a direct effect on CDC's ability to save lives.
This contract action is for supplies or services for which the Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of FAR 6.302-1 and 41 U.S.C. 3304(a)(1). Interested persons may identify their interest and capability to respond to the requirement or submit proposals.
This notice of intent is not a request for competitive quotations; however, all quotations/responses received within fifteen (15) days of the issuance of this notice will be considered by the government. A determination by the government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. Any quotation/response should be emailed to William Brannen at [email protected] by 11:00 A.M. EST., June 21, 2019.