The Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has a continuing requirement for a Research, Measurement, Assessment, Design, and Analysis (RMADA) 3 IDIQ to respond to the expanded needs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Health Care Reform ACT (HCERA).

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is the Federal agency responsible for the operation and oversight of the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the Federal participant in State-operated Medicaid programs and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). CMS’ mission is to assure health care security for the general public through the management of programs that include Medicare, Medicaid, and State Children’s Health Insurance Programs and to provide leadership in the broader health care marketplace to improve the health of all citizens. As an effective steward of public funds, CMS is committed to strengthening and modernizing the nation’s health care system by putting patient needs first, creating more flexibilities at the state and local level, and providing access to high quality care and improved health at lower costs. To help accomplish this mission, CMS was given broader authorities through legislation to test innovative models of care delivery and payment to determine whether they can maintain or improve quality and reduce cost, are sustainable, and are feasible for broader scale application. This work includes the development, implementation, monitoring, analysis, and rapid cycle evaluation of such models, building collaborative learning networks to disseminate best practices, developing necessary technology to support this activity, conducting rapid cycle analysis of the programs and participants, and rapid reporting of interim findings and summative findings as feasible.

The scope of activities of these models consists of all areas of healthcare research: costs, access, quality, service delivery models, financing, and payment approaches. These models are larger, more complex, and may be scaled without Congressional approval if programs demonstrate cost savings while maintaining or improving quality. These highly visible models draw intense interest and scrutiny from market and oversight stakeholders, the press, and policymakers. These models often are closely integrated with existing national programs and other models in testing. Such interactions must be carefully anticipated, understood, and managed to account for complex legal, operational, and policy priorities. These models also typically move from design to announcement and implementation in two years requiring adherence to deadlines and strong coordination across Contractors and CMS.

• The Contractor shall work with CMS on matters including but not limited to:
  • Supporting all aspects of model design and operations (except information technology)
  • Conducting programmatic technical, and environmental analyses
  • Monitoring model site implementations
  • Designing and carrying out surveys and other primary data collection activities
  • Obtaining and analyzing secondary data sources including data regarding Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and data from private payer sources needed to support model design, operations and evaluations
  • Reporting on formative and summative analyses
  • Providing rapid cycle evaluation feedback to CMS and/or model participants;
  • Creating summative reports of annual and final program findings
  • Assisting in developing program templates, tools, toolkits, and driver diagrams
  • Support stakeholder engagement and training
  • Provide data analysis/ integration support
  • Assist in developing program-specific technical/policy resource guides and informational/ educational/ briefing materials
  • Provide grant proposal reviews and summarization reports