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The Minneapolis VA Health Care System is conducting market research in accordance with FAR 17.207 Exercise of Options for Nurse Management Software and Support Services as described in the Statement o... The Minneapolis VA Health Care System is conducting market research in accordance with FAR 17.207 Exercise of Options for Nurse Management Software and Support Services as described in the Statement of Work below. This is a SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE only looking for businesses to provide the services listed in the Statement of Work below for market research purposes. No proposals are being requested or accepted with this notice. THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION FOR PROPOSALS OR PRICING AND NO CONTRACT SHALL BE AWARDED FROM THIS NOTICE. This notice shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Responses to this notice will be treated only as information for the Government to consider as part of their market research efforts. The information provided will be used by the Government in developing its acquisition strategy regarding possible set aside for Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned, Veteran-Owned, and other socio-economic categories of small business. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted or competition sensitive information contained in their response. The Government does not intend to pay for the information submitted in response to this notice and parties responding will not be entitled to payment for direct or indirect costs incurred in responding to this notice. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this requirement is 541519, Other Computer Related Services, with an SBA Small Business Size Standard of $34.0 Million. If you are a vendor capable of providing the requested information and required services described below with competitive pricing, send your information with a description of proof of capability and answers to all questions to: Alisha.Milander@va.gov on or before Tuesday, July 1, 2025 at 12:00 PM Central Time. Please provide answers as appropriate to the following questions in the table below with your response to this Sources Sought. Failure to respond accurately to the following questions may affect the acquisition strategy. Failure to respond to the questions at all will result in your response being determined as non-responsive. 1. Please provide all socio-economic categories of your firm (e.g., SDVOSB, VOSB, WOSB, Large Business, 8a, etc.) as well as your firm s SAM Unique Entity ID number (replaces DUNS number) and Government Contract POC. 2. State whether the requested services may be ordered against a government contract awarded to your organization (e.g Federal Supply Schedule (FSS), General Services Administration (GSA), etc.). 3. Provide estimated lead time to deliver a fully functioning solution as described in the Statement of Work below. *If applicable, FAR Provision 52.219-14 Limitations on Subcontracting, will apply to the potential solicitation if set-aside for Small-Businesses.* *If applicable, 852.219-75 VA Notice of Limitations on Subcontracting Certificate of Compliance for Services and Construction, will apply to the potential solicitation if set-aside for SDVOSBs/VOSBs.* DISCLAIMER This Sources Sought is issued solely for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation. All information received in response to this Sources Sought that is marked as proprietary will be handled accordingly. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Responders are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this Sources Sought. The deadline for this information is 12:00 PM Central Time on, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF WORK Description The Minneapolis VA Health Care System requires a services solution to automate nursing resource management processes, to include: Staff scheduling and staffing activities; real-time decision support for staffing management, enhance the availability of data and information relevant to patient care and deployment of nursing assets, provides self-scheduling options to nursing staff at multiple levels. This system will be cloud ready. Objectives Implement an automated, cloud-based, product and software management service tailored for managing nurse staffing and nursing assets throughout the facility. Match staff in numbers, skill and competency to support the acuity and needs of patients. Reduce the time and costs associated with scheduling and staffing activities. Manage budgets and costs. Accurately track staff movement. Use real-time data to support nurse staffing and nurse staff management decisions. Retrieve and organize data through a robust reports mechanism. Eliminate redundant work and improve data reliability through product interfaces with VHA data systems. Meet requirements as outlined by statute, VHA regulations and directives and local policies. Scope An integrated system and automated data extraction tool to effectively assign staffing resources and monitor resource management and utilization of nursing assets. This system will have proven ability to interface with a variety of VHA data management systems and provide minimally for unilateral data exchange. Capability for bilateral data exchange is preferred. The intent is to purchase products/services and not individual or facility software licenses. The primary users of the system will be nursing executives, nursing management, program assistants and front-line nursing staff. Tasks or Requirements Support appropriate responses to the fluctuations in patient census and acuities by using embedded decision support tools. Ensure adequate staffing numbers and skills mix based on patient acuity and other care related variables. Demonstrated ability to interface with VHA data systems for the collection, retrieval and organization of period-defined (hourly, shift, daily, monthly, annually, etc.) including, but not limited to : management of nursing resources and associated costs nursing hours (HPPD) data patient admission, discharge, and transfer activity clinically relevant reports Demonstrated ability to support compliance with public law and other regulatory and agency mandates for staffing regulations and monitors. Demonstrated ability to consolidate data from multiple sources to support multiple administrative decision functions into a single system (licensure, certifications, emergency notifications, etc.) Possess robust reporting capability including both parameters defined standardized and ad hoc reports. Demonstrated ability to accommodate staff self-scheduling based on sets of predetermined parameters. Deliverables or Deliver Schedule (Salient Characteristics) Specifications Utilizes an HL7 interface with Vista to transfer ,(unidirectional and bidirectional) real-time data including, but not limited to: Patient admission, discharge and transfer information Snapshots of inpatient census at pre-determined intervals Select staff data and information from human resource and payroll automated systems Capable of cloud computing with VHA approved entities. Vendor offers product as a service with no requirement to purchase actual software licenses. Vendor is responsible for support, general maintenance, fixes-patches, interface and updates installations which are included in the service cost. Vendor supplied 24/7 support. Required functional capabilities: Staff Scheduling Tools: demographic, skills and competency tracking tools create and maintain prospective schedules create schedules in increments of 6 weeks with flexibility for fewer or more weeks. create prospective schedules for, at a minimum 12 months. provide real-time staffing provide for auditing of changes made in the product by users including date/time and name of individual making changes provide archival functions allow staff to sign up for open and overtime shifts with notifications via email, text or users preferred method of communication. allow shift swapping among peers provides a module or function that specifically allows supervisors to view , interact and monitor shift schedules from a central or birds-eye vantage point. accommodate multi-level permissions-based access manage position control Staff Evaluation/Performance Monitoring Syst ability to maintain repositories of anecdotal notes for individual staffs performance evaluations ability to track: licensure currency, specialty certifications, skills-based competencies and education Tools for staff to self- report information into a professional portfolio. Rule engines to facilitate scheduling: apply regulations hour limits, time off, requirements, staffing ratios, etc) as they apply to individuals being scheduled to work: apply union requirements stored in the system to create staffing schedules use staff preferences to create staffing schedules. match competencies to staffing needs. match nursing staff with patient needs. apply unit preference to competencies, e.g., ICU nurses are ACLS certified. apply permanent schedules requests to when generating schedules. apply rotating shifts rules when generating schedules. accommodate scheduling changes based on patient census apply patient acuities to staffing needs track hours per patient day generate alternate work schedules allow or restrict swapping unit assignments based on competencies. restrict overtime assignment based on defined rules/regulations predict staffing needs based on previous trends (eg. high surgery days) provide functionality to maintain disaster preparedness (notifications and callbacks). Communication Tools: creates a personalized web-based dashboard for all stakeholders web-Based for employee access web-based for manager access provide options for staff bidding on open positions (Staff to staff communications (e.g. to swap shifts) produce reports for budge, operations and strategic planning. Training/Implementation Vendor to provide on-site training at facility targeting specific user groups: first line staff users managers schedulers and program assistants supervisors On-site implementation of the system is required as follows: Project Definition establishing project goals assigning project roles & workgroups define interfaces workload define and document existing workflow processes configuration of job codes and units and leave schedules present projections for workflow process System Configuration system Administrator Training security Configuration workload and Unit Budget validate Interface Data User Training pilot unit training user training system-wide project roll-out employee access position tracking Courses and Consultation staffing methodology class executive analytics class reports workshop data mining & scorecards set up alerts Security Considerations: In accordance with VA Handbook 6500.6 Appendix B, contractor, their personnel, and their subcontractors shall be subject to the Federal laws, regulations, standards, and VA Directives and Handbooks regarding information and information system security An interconnection between contractor and MVAHCS will exist with interfaces to VistA: Human Resources information, Census data, and Health Level 7 information. All interfaces will feed contractors system to eliminate points of double data entry and improve efficiencies. All data from these feeds will be compliant with protections for PHI The vendor must have an established Information Security Officer, who can provide oversight through the duration of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) phases (development, deployment, operations, and disposal) of the interconnection. All contractor employees who require access to the Department of Veterans Affairs' computer systems shall be the subject of a background investigation and must receive a favorable adjudication from the VA Security and Investigations Center and must complete TMS Training VA 10203 to meet privacy training require