September 24, 2014

The Department of Veteran Affairs, Office of Information & Technology (OI&T) Product Development (PD) on behalf of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has a requirement for a Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS). This procurement comes in light of recent scrutiny by the Congressional VA Oversight Committee, the newly appointed Veteran Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald, and issues exposed at Phoenix and other VA Medical Centers. As VA has spent over $167 million on a failed VA Replacement Scheduling project, this opportunity has high visibility. There will be much talk on this procurement on Capitol Hill, assuring that VA’s path is consistent with congressional direction. Medical Appointmentt Scheduling System (MASS) may be further impacted this year, as legislation recently passed by Congress (signed by the President) calls on a technology task force to review scheduling systems approach and make recommendations.

We are well into the procurement: Industry-Day having been completed in June, and Q&A completed in July. A draft SOW was released on September 17. According to a VA Press, the Solicitation RFP is anticipated to be released on a full and open basis during September 2014 with Proposals anticipated due 30 days following the Solicitation release, and award made prior to the end of CY2014.

Medical Appointment Scheduling Problem

In FY-2010 approximately 8.4 million of the 23.1 million living veterans in the nation were enrolled in the VA health care system. VHA’s 50,000 users schedule over 85 million appointments a year for this Veteran population. Modernization of the system across the enterprise is required in order to meet ambulatory and patient appointment needs of VHA today. In the current state, clinic grids are inflexible, productivity is not measurable, there is no method for scheduling resources (staff, rooms, equipment) and there are no links between scheduled appointments and ancillary appointments, i.e., lab and radiology. These broken links cause unnecessary bookings and rebooking as well as increased travel costs and patient dissatisfaction with VHA scheduling practices.

Resource-Centric Scheduling

Scheduling application “Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA)” lacks resource-centric scheduling, capacity planning and flexibility to schedule for evolving care delivery. Furthermore VA has just recently adopted an agile environment, and VA’s revamp of VistA will be the biggest project yet attempted under its agile development process. As there will be significant oversight and time demands placed on the project by Congress, implementation of a commercially off-the-shelf scheduling product, replacing VistA will be a challenge. To meet these needs and expectations, this enterprise scheduling business solution must provide consistent, seamless, timely and high-quality scheduling interactions for patients, providers and VHA scheduling oversight staff.

Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS) Demonstration Phase

Solicitation intelligence gathered indicates: VA will be requiring a full-blown proof-of-concept demonstration prior to award. This entails a two-phased evaluation period: The first phase will involve a technical evaluation of each proposal; the second phase will require actual demonstration, where the contractor/vendor demonstrates the capabilities of the system so that VA can actually see a working model. We understand that VA plans to conduct technical evaluations and complete demonstrations by mid-December, just weeks prior to awarding the contract. 

Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS) Proposal Status

Contractors who plan to bid VA Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS) should be concluding their Capture phase of intelligence gathering on client and competition. Effective contractors will have already developed their teams, outlined WIN-Strategy and Ghosting themes, have their technical solution and their proof-of-concept process in place, and make preparations for the final push – the proposal phase.