Announcement of Competition Under the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2011: Veterans Medical Appointment Scheduling System, 63424-63437 [2012-25408]
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Current Actions: There are no changes
being made to the revenue procedure at
this time.
Type of Review: Extension of a
currently approved collection.
Affected Public: Business or other forprofit organizations and individuals.
Estimated Number of Respondents:
23,000.
Estimated Time per Respondent: 5
hrs., 21 min.
Estimated Total Annual Reporting
Burden Hours: 126,175.
(3) Title: Special Loss Discount
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OMB Number: 1545–1130.
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Abstract: Form 8816 is used by
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proper additional deduction was
claimed and to insure the proper
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Current Actions: There is no change
in the paperwork burden previously
approved by OMB.
Type of Review: Extension of a
currently approved collection.
Affected Public: Business or other forprofit organizations.
Estimated Number of Respondents:
3,000.
Estimated Time Per Respondent: 6
hrs, 37 min.
Estimated Total Annual Burden
Hours: 19,830.
(4) Title: Settlement Funds.
OMB Number: 1545–1299.
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Type of Review: Extension of a
currently approved collection.
Affected Public: Individuals, business
or other for-profit organizations, not forprofit institutions, farms and Federal,
state, local or tribal governments.
Estimated Number of Respondents:
1,500.
Estimated Time Per Respondent: 2
hrs., 22 min.
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Estimated Total Annual Burden
Hours: 3,542.
(5) Title: Automatic Relief for Late S
Corporation Elections.
OMB Number: 1545–1562.
Form Number: Revenue Procedure
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Abstract: The Small Business Job
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attaching a statement explaining that the
requirements of the revenue procedure
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Current Actions: There is no change
in the paperwork burden previously
approved by OMB.
Type of Review: Extension of a
currently approved collection.
Affected Public: Business or other-forprofit organizations.
Estimated Number of Respondents:
100.
Estimated Time Per Respondent: 1
hrs.
Estimated Total Annual Burden
Hours: 100.
The following paragraph applies to all
of the collections of information covered
by this notice:
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sponsor, and a person is not required to
respond to, a collection of information
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of information must be retained as long
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as required by 26 U.S.C. 6103.
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submitted in response to this notice will
be summarized and/or included in the
request for OMB approval. All
comments will become a matter of
public record. Comments are invited on:
(a) Whether the collection of
information is necessary for the proper
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agency, including whether the
information shall have practical utility;
(b) the accuracy of the agency’s estimate
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maintenance, and purchase of services
to provide information.
Approved: October 10, 2012.
R. Joseph Durbala,
IRS Reports Clearance Officer.
[FR Doc. 2012–25306 Filed 10–15–12; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4830–01–P
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS
AFFAIRS
Announcement of Competition Under
the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2011: Veterans
Medical Appointment Scheduling
System
Department of Veterans Affairs.
Notice.
AGENCY:
ACTION:
To encourage development of
systems that help Veterans schedule
appointments to receive care from the
Veterans Health Administration and to
reduce risks in the future procurement
and deployment of those systems, the
Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA)
announces a prize contest under Section
105 of the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2011, Public Law
111–358 (2011), 15 USC 3719 (the
‘‘Act’’).
DATES: Entries will be accepted until
10:59 p.m. EDT on March 1, 2013.
Winners will be announced on or about
90 days after the entry deadline.
ADDRESSES: The official contest Web site
is https://vascheduling.challenge.gov.
Contestants must register via the official
contest Web site as provided in Section
4 of the Rules set forth in this notice.
Entries must be submitted electronically
as specified in Section 5 of the Rules.
FOR INFORMATION CONTACT: Michael A.
Moore, Special Assistant to Chief
Technology Officer, Office of the
Secretary, Department of Veterans
Affairs, 810 Vermont Avenue NW.,
Washington, DC 20420; (202) 461–5764.
(This is not a toll-free number.) Also, see
Section 11, below.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
SUMMARY:
Introduction
VA uses the Medical Scheduling
Package (MSP), a component in its
VistA electronic health record (EHR)
system, to perform multiple interrelated
functions to bring patients, clinicians
and other resources together so care can
be delivered. The MSP also captures
data which allows VA to measure,
manage and improve access to care,
quality of care, operating efficiency and
operating and capital resources.
VA’s current MSP is more than 25
years old. It does not meet current
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requirements and does not provide the
flexibility to support new and emerging
models of care. VA will be replacing the
MSP.
Using the authority of the Act and this
contest, VA will obtain information that
will allow it to understand various risks
and thus reduce risks inherent in the
procurement and deployment of highly
complex mission critical software which
integrates with VA’s VistA system.
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VA’s Health Delivery System
VA’s Veterans Health Administration
(VHA) operates one of the largest
integrated health delivery systems in the
United States, delivering comprehensive
care to approximately six million
Veterans through a network of health
care facilities owned and staffed by VA,
academic medical affiliates and other
contracted providers, contracted
networks, and episodic fee-for-service
purchases. Veterans scheduled
approximately 80 million outpatient
clinical visits—more than 300,000 each
working day in FY 2011.
VA delivers care through 21 Veterans
Integrated Services Networks (VISNs)
which administer:
• 152 hospitals, sometimes known as
VA Medical Centers or VAMCs,
• 971 outpatient clinics—most of
which are extensions of a parent
hospital, and
• 133 community living centers
which deliver skilled nursing and
extended care.
VHA sites of care are distributed
across the United States and Puerto Rico
with additional clinics in Guam and the
Philippines. Veterans are
administratively aligned with the
hospital of their choice but may receive
care through any hospital.
VA’s care delivery model is centered
in the Patient Aligned Care Team
(PACT), VA’s implementation of the
Patient Centered Medical Home.
• PACTs consist of multidisciplinary
clinical and support staff that deliver all
primary care and coordinate the
remainder of patients’ needs, including
specialty care.
• Veterans assigned to a PACT may
schedule appointments with any
member of the team.
• Routine appointments with
specialists are often scheduled based on
a PACT referral; specialty care referrals
can also come from clinicians providing
inpatient care, the Emergency
Department, community providers, or
patients themselves.
• Veterans generally schedule their
own follow-up appointments with
specialists or specialty care services
without the intervention of the PACT.
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Appointment scheduling is currently
performed primarily via telephone, in
person, or mail. The intervention of a
VA employee is currently required to
make appointments. VA needs to enable
Veterans to schedule their own
appointments electronically via online
and mobile devices.
VA also needs to schedule and
coordinate care across internal and
external administrative, or system,
boundaries. As examples:
• Veterans may choose to live in
different states at different times of the
year and need to make appointments to
receive care where they live when they
need it.
• A clinician who can provide
needed care for a Veteran may be
located at a different hospital, in
different VISN or at an external
academic affiliate or contract medical
group.
• A physician who will be examining
a Veteran to determine nature and
extent of a service-related disability may
also be located at a different hospital,
VISN, or be delivering examination
services under contract.
• Telemedicine technologies can
support care delivery by a clinician who
is physically located at a different
hospital or even in a different VISN than
the physical location where the Veteran
will receive the care.
• PACTS need to coordinate care
with non-VA community providers
when Veterans choose to receive care
both inside and outside the VA system.
• Support services such as non-VA
transportation services must be
coordinated.
VA currently relies on the MSP to
perform non-scheduling functions
including workload data capture and a
broad range of workload and other
management reports.
VA’s Technical Infrastructure
VA’s current medical MSP is a
component (application) of its VistA
electronic health record (EHR) system.
The MSP is tightly integrated with
VistA; it reads data from more than 130
other VistA applications and has read/
write functionality with more than 30
additional applications.
VistA systems are localized at the
hospital level and will remain so for at
least the near-term future. Each hospital
operates a separate instance of VistA.
Portions of the VistA code are identical
in each instance; different instances of
VistA may have different interfaces
between the MSP and other VistA
applications.
Any replacement product must not
negatively impact any current
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applications that interface with the MSP
or its data.
Replacing VA’s Medical Scheduling
Software
VA intends to replace the current
MSP with a scheduling product 1 which
is a standards-based, modular,
extensible and scalable, certified as
compliant and fully interoperable with
the production version of VistA now
held by the Open Source Electronic
Health Record Agent (OSEHRA), http:
//www.osehra.org/.
The replacement product must
effectively perform VA’s schedulingcentric and scheduling-related legacy
business functions. It must also
demonstrate it can meet non-functional
requirements including integration with
multiple instances of VistA.2
Role of This Contest in Replacement of
VA’s Medical Scheduling Software
This contest will achieve two
significant goals in replacement of VA’s
MSP.
• First, it will mitigate risks which
VA has identified as contributing to the
failure of previous attempts to replace
the MSP.
• Second, it will encourage
commercial software vendors to actively
engage in development of solutions, by
providing a basis on which VA can rate
proposals in any subsequent
procurement of a replacement for the
MSP.
Risk Mitigation. VA’s previous
attempts to replace the MSP module in
VistA were not successful. Assessments
of the reasons for these failures
identified three critical risks that VA
will mitigate via this contest:
• Market Research: One of the
reasons VA was not successful was lack
of sufficient knowledge about the actual
capabilities of vendors to meet VA’s
business needs. Via this contest, VA
will obtain valuable information about
industry’s current ability to meet VA’s
business needs via actual demonstration
of product capabilities in a VA-defined
test environment. Additionally, VA will
be able to assess industry’s ability to
perform not just scheduling-centric
functions offered by most robust
scheduling products, but also
scheduling-related workload-capture
and data-reporting functions that are
1 As used in this notice, ‘‘product’’ means either
a discrete software module which is installed on
VA servers or a software service.
2 The replacement product will, as a part of the
overall VistA EHR, deliver privacy, security, data
integrity, patient accessibility, interoperability and
other services required by federal law, regulations
and VA policy. Many of these services are delivered
by other components of VistA.
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unique to VA. This contest will also
provide VA with valuable information
about changes in business workflows
that will be needed when a replacement
product is deployed.
• Integration issues: Another reason
why earlier attempts were not
successful was VA’s inability to
effectively integrate replacement
software with the VistA system. Since
then, VA has elected to place VistA in
the open source community and to
prefer software products which are
openly architected to integrate with
VistA. Via this contest, VA will be able
to assess industry’s ability to technically
integrate its products with Open Source
VistA.
• Test environment: Analyses for the
previous lack of success also found that
VA was unable to effectively test
replacement software to assure it met
functional and technical requirements.
To support this contest VA will develop
and deploy a test environment, judge
contest entries using that test
environment, assess the effectiveness of
the test environment, then use the
results of that assessment to adjust the
test environment as needed to support
testing in a procurement of a deployable
scheduling replacement product.
Via this contest, VA will obtain the
needed information in a lower-risk-offailure context than if directly procuring
a deployable replacement product. VA
believes the information it obtains via
direct evaluation of entries in this
contest will be superior in quality and
can be obtained in significantly less
time via this contest route than by
custom development. VA also believes
the aggregate cost of the contest is
highly competitive with the cost of
acquiring the same types of information
via other arrangements. If industry is
not able to demonstrate it can meet VA’s
needs then no prize will be awarded.
Effect on Subsequent Procurement.
VA anticipates that compatibility with
Open Source VistA will be among the
requirements in any subsequent
procurement of a replacement for the
MSP. Demonstration of open source
compatibility in this contest may be
taken into consideration in the rating of
proposals in any subsequent
procurement.
Contest Requirements and Rules
1. Subject of the Contest. The goal of
this contest is to encourage creation of
systems that help Veterans make
appointments to receive outpatient and
ambulatory care 3 from the Veterans
Health Administration. VA also seeks to
3 Scheduling of inpatient, surgical, and extended
nursing care is excluded.
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obtain information which will allow it
to reduce the risks inherent in
procurement and deployment of a
replacement medical scheduling
product.
2. Numbers and Amounts of Prizes.
a. VA will award monetary prizes of
as much as $3 Million to as many as
three entrants that deliver
demonstration software or service
which the judges determine delivers the
required functionality and is compatible
with Open Source VistA, as described in
this notice.
b. Judges will determine the number
and amount of monetary prizes. Judges
may determine that no prize will be
awarded.
c. VA may consider compatibility
with Open Source VistA as
demonstrated in this contest when
considering proposals in any
subsequent procurement of MSP-related
product(s).
3. Basis on which a winner will be
selected. (See section 6 for judging
procedures and point system.) Winners
will be selected from entries that
demonstrate 4 to the satisfaction of the
judges that they:
a. Perform as required by these rules
while interfaced with VA-provided
VistA instances running on VAprovided virtual machines. Performance
with other versions or instances of
VistA will not be considered.
b. Perform each of the schedulingcentric business functions defined by
VA on Attachment A to this notice,
including particularly:
1. Automated scheduling of an
appointment at any VA site from any
location by a Veteran using online or
mobile devices or by a VA employee
acting as a scheduler,5 and
2. Where semi-automated scheduling
is performed, use of a calendar-view
format presentation of available
resource(s), with support for point-andclick scheduling when the calendar
view shows needed resources to be
available.6
c. Perform all or some of the
designated Scheduling-Related/VASpecific business functions set forth on
Attachment B to this notice, including
functions related to workload capture,
data analysis and reporting, operational
and capital planning and travel
reimbursement.
4 Winning products will be used for
demonstration only and will not be deployed in VA
facilities except for testing or demonstration
purposes.
5 See, e.g., Attachment A, sections 1.4.1, 1.4.5,
2.7, 3
6 See, e.g., Attachment A, sections 1.2.5, 3, 3.5,
3.7.
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d. Perform each of the non-functional
requirements set forth on Attachment C
to this notice.
e. Do so using open APIs, including
open source code for the interfaces
between the product and VistA, and at
the option of the entrant, using open
source modules to support some or all
of the product’s additional functions.
Note: Entries that consist of proprietary
code are not precluded, so long as
interfaces with VistA use open APIs and
the software implementing the
interfaces is made available as open
source code.
4. Registration for this Contest.
a. Not later than 10:59 p.m. EST
February 1, 2013, potential entrants
must request registration for the contest
by submitting a letter via the
‘‘Submissions’’ section of the official
contest Web site, https://vascheduling.
challenge.gov. The letter must be signed
by the entrant if an individual or by a
corporate officer if the entrant is a
corporation. The letter must:
1. Attest that the potential entrant is
eligible to participate in this contest per
the requirements of this notice and the
Act,
2. Attest that disqualifying factors for
participation in the contest, as defined
in this notice and the Act, do not exist,
3. Contain a listing (which may be an
attachment) of all owners of all
intellectual property (IP) which the
potential entrant will incorporate or use
in its entry,
4. Contain a listing (which may be an
attachment) of all components of the
entry that the potential entrant will
designate as open source,
5. Attest that the potential entrant is
the owner or licensee of any and all
intellectual property (IP) to be
incorporated in the entry, and by virtue
of such ownership or license has full
right and authority to authorize, and
does authorize VA (and any of VA’s
consultants, contractors or collaborating
federal agencies) to reproduce, test,
demonstrate and use such IP for any
purpose related to this contest,
including judging,
6. Attest that the potential entrant:
a. Is the owner or licensee of any and
all IP in open source modules
designated by the entrant to be
incorporated in the entry;
b. Has full right and authority to
convey all rights set forth in an Apache
2.0 license 7 in the designated open
source modules; and
c. Will, if selected as a winner in this
contest, apply the Apache 2.0 license to
the designated source modules and
contribute the software to OSEHRA.
7 Text available at https://www.apache.org/
licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
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7. Attest that the potential entrant
agrees it is bound by all rules, assumes
all risks, and has acquired or will
acquire any insurance required by this
notice.
8. State whether the potential entry
will be an installable software, software
as a service (SaaS) or contain
components of both, and whether the
contestant intends to supply resources
external to the virtual machines to be
provided by VA to support or execute
the contestant’s entry (e.g., servers that
support SaaS), and identifying those
resources.
9. State the name, business and email
address and telephone number of the
individual who is the designated
contact for and who will receive all
communications related to this contest.
a. The letter, attachments, and any
additional written materials must be
submitted electronically in a format
fully compatible with both Microsoft
Word 2007 and Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.
b. Letters which do not include each
of the items stated in paragraph 4(a) and
in the required formats will not be
effective to register the potential entrant.
c. At the option of the potential
entrant, letters may be accompanied by
additional written materials describing
the potential entrant or the entry not
exceeding ten 81⁄2 by 11 inch pages in
length. These materials will be in a
format fully compatible with Microsoft
Word 2007 or Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.
d. Letters and all attachments are
subject to file size limits of the official
contest Web site.
5. Procedures for Submitting Entries;
Confidentiality of Entries.
a. Potential entrants that submit a
letter meeting the requirements set forth
in Section 4, above, will be registered
for this contest.
1. Registered contestants will be sent
an email at the address provided by the
contestant. The email will contain
instructions on how to access VAsupplied virtual machine space to
integrate, configure, and test their
solution prior to submission as an entry.
2. Depending on the number of
potential entrants that register for this
contest and the ready availability of
virtual machines, there may be a delay
between submission of a letter
requesting registration and an email
accepting the letter. There may also be
delay in actual availability of virtual
machines. Potential entrants assume all
risk of such delays and the possibility
that any delay may leave them
insufficient time before the entry
deadline to fully integrate, configure
and test their solution.
b. Each contestant will be supplied
with three virtual machines.
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1. Each machine will be loaded with
a sample instance of VistA with sample
data, each with a different patch level
and each set to operate in a different
time zone. This will permit
configuration and testing of multiplesite scheduling functions.
2. Two of the virtual machines will
use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 (64
bit) operating system. The third
machine will use the Windows Server
2008 (32 bit) operating system.
3. Contestants may begin installation
and testing of their product immediately
upon receipt of access to the virtual
space.
c. Contestants may provide resources
in addition to the virtual machines
provided by VA, e.g., servers which
support SaaS.
1. Integration of all external resources
with the virtual machines provided by
VA will be the sole responsibility of the
contestant.
2. All expenses related to any
additional resources will be at the sole
cost and expense of the contestant.
d. VA will post Screening Use Cases
in the ‘‘Updates’’ section on the contest
Web site, https://vascheduling.challenge.
gov. These Use Cases will be used in the
evaluation of the functional and
technical capabilities of entries.
e. Each contestant will integrate their
solution with the provided VistA
instances, and will provide test plans
and automated test scripts that
demonstrate performance of the
functional requirements on Attachments
A, B, and C in the context of the
Screening Use Cases.
f. Test scripts must meet the following
requirements:
1. Scripts must be submitted as open
source software, in accordance with the
criteria posted on the contest Web site,
including documentation and OSIapproved open source licenses, with the
Apache 2.0 license applied to all code.
The submittal must include instructions
for execution and a copy of results for
comparison.
2. Scripts must operate in the
OSEHRA CTEST environment.
3. Scripts must be repeatable, that is,
they must include separated executable
automated code that restores all data
values to their previous state, allowing
the test to be rerun with consistent
results.
4. If any changes are made to the
provided VistA instances, those changes
must also be submitted as open source
code, compliant with the criteria posted
on the contest Web site including
documentation and OSI-approved open
source licenses, with the Apache 2.0
license applied to all code. This
includes the VistA-side components of
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any interface code, such as Applications
Program Interfaces (APIs).
5. Contestant must submit repeatable
open source test scripts for all specified
use cases in accordance with the
instructions posted on the contest Web
site, with instructions and results from
their testing.
g. Each registered contestant that
wishes its or their product to be
formally entered in the contest shall, not
later than 10:59 p.m. EST March 1,
2013, submit a letter via the
‘‘Submissions’’ section of the official
contest Web site, https://vascheduling.
challenge.gov. The letter must be signed
by the entrant if an individual or by a
corporate officer if the entrant is a
corporation. The letter must state:
1. The registered contestant has
completed installation of its or their
product, test plans and automated test
scripts on the virtual servers provided
by VA, has completed testing to its or
their satisfaction, and formally submits
the contents of the virtual machines as
their entry in the contest.
2. The letter submitted by the
registered contestant at the time of
registration is incorporated by reference
and the contents of that letter are in all
respects ratified and confirmed.
Provided, however, that contestants may
at their option amend the contents of
the following sections of the registration
letter:
a. Section 4(a)(3), relating to a listing
of the owners of all IP incorporated into
the contestant’s entry;
b. Section 4(a)(4), relating to the
components of the entry which the
contestant will designate as open
source;
c. Section 4(a)(8), relating to whether
the entry is installable software, SaaS, or
contains components of both and
whether resources external to the VAsupplied virtual machines is or will be
used by the contestant to support or
execute contestant’s entry.
d. Section 4(a)(9), relating to contact
information.
e. Section 4(d), relating to optional
descriptive materials.
3. If resources external to the VAsupplied virtual machines is or will be
used by a contestant to support or
execute contestant’s entry, the letter
shall also state: ‘‘[I/We] certify that from
and after the submission of this letter
until the announcement of the contest
winners, no changes whatsoever will be
made to any of the external software or
resources [I/we] have designated to
support or execute [my/our] entry.’’
4. Registered contestants that do not
submit a letter as required by this
subsection will be deemed to have
withdrawn from the contest and the
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contents of virtual machines assigned to
them will not be judged.
5. Letters formally submitting entries
for judging, along with all attachments,
are subject to file size limits of the
official contest Web site.
h. All virtual machine environments
will be frozen as of 10:59 p.m. EST
March 1, 2013. If a registered contestant
has submitted a letter as provided in
section 5(g), then the contestant’s entry
in this contest will be deemed to be the
code and other content installed on the
virtual machines at the time the virtual
machine environment is frozen, as well
as the code and other contest installed
on external resources if any, at that
time.
i. Submissions or entries will not be
readily available to other entrants or to
the public. These materials may,
however, be disclosable as determined
solely by VA pursuant to its obligation
to comply with the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552.
6. Judging of Entries.
a. Method. VA may use any technical
means it determines suitable to evaluate
any entry, award points and determine
any winner in this contest. All or any
part of the evaluation may be conducted
by third parties under VA supervision.
VA may use an entrant’s submitted
testing scripts, routines and software to
perform all or part of any evaluation and
judging. VA may, at its option, request
an entrant to demonstrate its or their
entry either in-person or via web-based
technologies.
b. Technical Evaluation. VA
contemplates it will judge entries as
follows.
1. An entry will first be evaluated to
determine Open Source VistA
Compatibility, i.e.:
a. Whether it is compatible with the
three separate VistA instances on the
VA-supplied virtual machines, and
b. Whether the interfaces between the
product and VistA are based on software
code that either is or can become open
source.
VA contemplates substantial portions
of this evaluation will be conducted by
OSEHRA. Any entry that does not
demonstrate Open Source VistA
Compatibility to the satisfaction of the
judges will be disqualified and will not
be further considered for a prize.
2. An entry which demonstrates Open
Source VistA Compatibility will then be
evaluated to determine whether it
performs all Non-Functional
requirements set forth on Attachment C.
Any entry which does not demonstrate
to the satisfaction of the judges that it
can perform the Non-Functional
Requirements on Attachment C will be
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disqualified and will not be further
considered for a prize.
3. Entries which demonstrate Open
Source VistA Compatibility and also
demonstrate they meet Non-functional
Requirements will be deemed to be
Technically Compatible.
c. Functional Evaluation. VA will
evaluate an entry that has demonstrated
Technical Compatibility to determine
whether it can perform the Schedulingcentric functions defined on Attachment
A. An entry that does not demonstrate
to the satisfaction of the judges that it
can perform the Scheduling-centric
functions defined on Attachment A will
be disqualified and will not be further
considered for a prize.
d. VA-Specific Functions. An entry
that demonstrates Technical
Compatibility and also demonstrates it
can perform all of the Schedulingcentric functions on Attachment A will
then be evaluated to determine whether
it can perform any of the Schedulingrelated or VA-specific functions defined
on Attachment B.
1. Judges will award the designated
points for each function defined on
Attachment B that they determine is
performed by the entry.
2. A maximum of 120 points can be
awarded for performance of functions
defined on Attachment B.
e. Open Source Content. An entry that
demonstrates Technical Compatibility
and also demonstrates it can perform all
of the Scheduling-centric functions on
Attachment A will also be evaluated by
the judges to determine the extent to
which it uses software modules, as
designated by the entrant, which are or
will become open source.
1. Interfaces between the product and
VistA will not be considered in this
phase of the judging, as they are a
required component of Open Source
Compatibility.
2. Judges will evaluate the
significance of the designated open
source modules in delivering required
functions. For example, judges may
determine that modules that provide
common platform services or business
logic are more significant than modules
that deliver the presentation layer.
3. Judges may award a maximum of
30 points for significant open source
modules incorporated in an entry.
Points awarded by the judges will
determine the winners of this contest.
7. Eligibility. To be eligible to
participate in this contest and win a
prize:
a. Entrants must register for this
contest as set forth in Section 4 and
submit a letter formally entering their
product in the contest as set forth in
Section 5.
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b. If an individual, an entrant must be
a citizen of or permanent resident of the
United States. If an entity, an entrant
must be incorporated in and maintain a
primary place of business in the United
States.
c. An entrant may not be a Federal
entity or Federal employee acting in the
scope of the employee’s employment.
d. Entrants shall be responsible for
obtaining insurance they deem
necessary to cover claims by any third
party for death, bodily injury, or
property damage or loss resulting from
an activity carried out in connection
with or participation in this contest.
e. Entrants must have complied with
all requirements of this notice and all
requirements established by the Act.
f. By registering for or submitting an
entry in this contest, contestants and
entrants agree to assume any and all
risks and waive any claims against the
Federal Government and its related
entities (except in the case of willful
misconduct) for any injury, death,
damage, or loss of property, revenue or
profits, whether direct, indirect, or
consequential, arising from their
participation in this contest, whether
the injury, death, damage, or loss arises
through negligence of otherwise.
Provided, however, that by registering or
submitting an entry, contestants and
entrants do not waive claims against VA
arising out of the unauthorized use or
disclosure by the agency of the
intellectual property, trade secrets, or
confidential information of the entrant.
8. Intellectual Property (IP).
a. VA is not responsible for a
registered contestant’s or entrant’s lack
of compliance with copyright,
trademark, patent or other Federal law.
Contestants and entrants will hold
harmless, defend, and indemnify the
Federal Government and any agency or
component thereof from and against any
suit, claim, demand, liability, damages,
costs and expenses (including attorneys’
fees and costs of defense), of whatever
nature, whether groundless, false or
fraudulent, arising out of any use,
licensing or relicensing of any IP that is
incorporated in the entrant’s entry.
b. Without limiting the generality of
the foregoing and in explanation but not
limitation of sections 4(a)(5) and 4(a)(6),
contestants and entrants are responsible
for obtaining all third-party licenses
required to allow the VA and its
contractors to receive any and all IP
installed on any virtual machine, to run
any and all testing software or scripts,
and to demonstrate an entrant’s product.
Windows and Linux operating systems
will be accepted; however contestants
and entrants will need to obtain proper
licenses for running any Windows in
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Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
any resource external to the VAsupplied virtual machines that is or will
be used by the contestant to support or
execute contestant’s entry.
c. The winner(s) of this contest will,
in consideration of the prize to be
awarded, apply the Apache 2.0 license
to the designated open source modules
(including the interfaces between
winner’s product and VistA) and
contribute the modules to OSEHRA.8
d. VA may in its sole and absolute
discretion choose to negotiate with any
entrant to acquire, license, use or
convey any other intellectual property
developed in connection with this
contest.
9. Judges and Judging Procedures.
a. Subject to the requirements of 15
U.S.C. 3719(k), the VA Assistant
Secretary for Information Technology,
acting on behalf and with the authority
of the Secretary of VA, will appoint one
or more qualified individuals to act as
judges of this contest and may appoint
himself as a judge. Judges may include
individuals from outside VA, including
from the private sector. Judges will
operate in a transparent manner.
b. A judge may not have a personal or
financial interest in, or be an employee,
officer, director, or agent of any entity
that is a registered entrant in this
contest, and may not have a familial or
financial relationship with an
individual who is a registered entrant.
c. Specific tasks related to the judging
process may be delegated to VA
employees or employees of a
collaborating Federal agency. Third
parties may perform judging tasks
subject to supervision by VA or by a
collaborating Federal agency.
d. Judges shall have the authority to
disregard any minor error in any entry
that does not create any substantial
benefit or detriment to any entrant.
e. Judges shall have the authority to
obtain from any entrant additional
information, clarification of
information, or assistance in resolving
any technical issues relating to the
installation, use, testing or evaluation of
any entry, so long as no substantial
benefit or detriment to any entrant
occurs thereby.
f. Decisions of the judges are final.
10. Payment of Prizes.
a. Prior to payment of any prize, an
apparent winner must execute (at VA’s
option, under oath or affirmation) such
documents as VA may reasonably
require, including but not limited to:
1. Declarations and certifications that
relate to the apparent winner’s
eligibility to participate in this contest,
the absence of any disqualifying factor,
the assumption of risks and acquisition
of any insurance required by the rules,
2. The conveyance of any intellectual
property required by the rules, and
3. Any other matter that VA may
reasonably require, including but not
limited to information reasonably
necessary for VA to make payment via
electronic funds transfer and issue IRS
Forms 1099 according to VA’s fiscal
policy.
11. Procedures for obtaining
additional information.
a. During the period of the contest,
potential contestants or entrants may
63429
submit questions or comments to VA
using the ‘‘Discussions’’ section on the
official contest Web site, https://
vascheduling.challenge.gov.
b. VA may choose not to respond to
any question or comment or to delete
questions or comments that it
determines are not relevant to the
competition or which seek technical
guidance. VA’s responses on the
‘‘Discussion’’ section of the contest Web
site are not official guidance.
c. VA may also provide information
and official guidance related to this
contest on the ‘‘Updates’’ section of the
official contest Web site, https://
vascheduling.challenge.gov. An entrant
is bound by official guidance on the
‘‘Updates’’ section that is posted prior to
formal submission of their entry.
Signing Authority
The Secretary of Veterans Affairs, or
designee, approved this document and
authorized the undersigned to sign and
submit the document to the Office of the
Federal Register for publication
electronically as an official document of
the Department of Veterans Affairs. John
R. Gingrich, Chief of Staff, Department
of Veterans Affairs, approved this
document on October 11, 2012, for
publication.
Dated: October 11, 2012.
Robert C. McFetridge,
Director, Regulation Policy and Management,
Office of the General Counsel, Department
of Veterans Affairs.
ATTACHMENT A—SCHEDULING—CENTRIC FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Business need
(BN)
Revised owner
No.
BN 1: Manage National Medical Scheduling Setup—The
scheduling system shall provide the capability to configure
and manage business rules and standards at a national
level including establishing parameters for role-based user
access and security and supporting a process to monitor
and evaluate results of audit reports.
Owner requirement (OWNR)
1.1
The system shall have the capability to provide integrated,
electronic access to and from other VistA applications.
1.2
Maintain and Modify Scheduling Configuration—The system
shall provide the capability to establish and maintain national, VISN, VAMC, clinic, provider-level configuration
standards. Configuration shall be enabled for facility-level
within business rules and parameters.
The system shall have the capability to provide on-line help.
The system shall have the capability to maintain an audit
trail of changes to resource configuration.
The system shall have the capability to create, modify, and
delete configurable business rules that are used in the
scheduling process.
The system shall provide the capability to configure resources at the National, VISN, facility, clinic and provider
levels.
1.2.1
1.2.2
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1.2.3
1.2.4
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63430
Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
ATTACHMENT A—SCHEDULING—CENTRIC FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS—Continued
Business need
(BN)
Revised owner
No.
1.2.5
1.3
1.3.1
1.3.2
1.3.3
1.3.4
1.3.5
1.3.6
1.3.7
1.4
1.4.1
1.4.2
1.4.3
1.4.4
1.4.5
1.5
1.6
1.6.1
1.7
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1.7.1
1.7.2
1.8
BN 2: Manage Veteran Information—The system shall have
the ability to access and manage, update and maintain accurate Veteran information. Veteran special needs and
preferences shall be accessible and able to be updated in
‘‘real-time’’.
Owner requirement (OWNR)
The system shall provide synchronization with individual (patient or provider) Office Automation calendar for multiple
types of end user devices, including mobile applications irrespective of operating system.
Flexible Appointment Scheduling—The scheduling system
shall provide the capability to configure schedule parameters.
The system shall allow configuration of scheduling to accommodate holidays.
The system shall allow flexible schedule options for urgent
care and walk-in appointments.
The system shall allow scheduling between facilities located
in different time zones.
The system shall have the capability to allow users to specify timing relationships between activities (e.g., coordinate
multiple activities in specified order).
The system shall be configurable to display only available
resources.
The system shall have the capability to allow users to define
a standard set of appointment types with default appointment lengths.
The system shall have the capability to search for available
appointments using specific parameters and to display results for multiple resources in a single view.
User Access—The system shall provide the ability to maintain and modify user access.
The system shall provide role-based security for access control and provide improved remote access for Veterans to
make and view appointments over the internet, email and
other mobile devices.
The system shall have the ability to create, configure, and
maintain role-based user (staff and veteran) access and
authorization.
The system shall allow configuration and tailoring of user access roles at the national, VISN, facility, clinic, and provider levels based on business rules and policies.
The system shall have the capability to enforce rules concerning what roles can overbook appointments for a service or resource.
The system shall have the capability to allow, in certain circumstances, Veterans to schedule appointments via remote access mechanisms such as phone, internet, email
and other mobile devices.
Resources and Groups—The system shall provide the capability to create, modify, manage, delete, and report on resources and groups.
Audit Trails—The system shall have the capability to display
business and technical audit trails.
The system shall provide the ability to record data to
produce audit trails for items including: user access activities, modifications to schedules.
Templates—The system shall have the capability to create,
modify, change status, and manage of templates which include notifications, letters, and scheduling events. The
system shall allow the templates to be shared and saved.
The system shall allow the templates to be shared.
The system shall allow the templates to be saved.
The system shall allow for the configuration of notifications,
flags and alerts for scheduling process.
2.1
The system shall have the capability to provide alerts if patient information is missing, out of date, or requires
verification (e.g., eligibility, means test, demographics).
2.2
The system shall have the capability to maintain and present
appointment information (past and future) within a specified date range (e.g., including appointments kept, providers, cancellations and no-show history).
The system shall have the capability to display eligibility information necessary for appropriate scheduling.
2.3
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63431
ATTACHMENT A—SCHEDULING—CENTRIC FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS—Continued
Business need
(BN)
Revised owner
No.
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.9
BN 3: Manage Request—Through the use of a calendar
view, the scheduler is able to view all providers, services,
facilities, and Veterans from a variety of calendar views
such as: daily, weekly, monthly with multiple providers,
services or facilities in view on a single screen. The
scheduling system shall accommodate appointment requests from multiple inputs sources, including Veterans
and providers via different sources such as MyHeatheVet,
walk-ins, email and other communication modes. This
forms the basis of non-solicited demand. Solicited demand
emerges in the form of unfulfilled appointments based on
missed opportunities or requests outside the scheduling
appointment horizon.
Owner requirement (OWNR)
The system shall have the ability to notify/inform schedulers
of patient preferences.
The system shall have the capability to receive notification
of deceased patients and allow the authorized user to
cancel future appointments/ancillary services/orders once
notification has been received from an authoritative
source.
The system shall have the capability to establish and update
patient information (enrollment status, eligibility, demographics, preferences and special needs, means test status, provider assignments, etc.).
The system shall have the capability to allow patient appointments with multiple providers at multiple facilities.
The system shall provide the ability to identify and verify the
identification of the Veteran.
The system shall support user configuration preferences for
data display and entry screens within security and standards constraints.
3.1
Variable Appointment Types and Lengths—The system shall
have the capability to allow variable appointment types
and variable appointment lengths [e.g., Compensation &
Pension (C&P), Mental Health Clinic (MHC), Primary Care
Clinic (PCC), New, Follow-up, Pre-op, Post-op].
3.1.1
The scheduling system shall display any other scheduled or
requested appointments for the patient when an appointment is requested.
The system shall have the capability to allow users to
schedule an appointment for a specific, user-defined,
length of time, based on role-based access rules.
The system shall have the capability to establish recurring
appointments.
The system shall provide the ability to verify patient information, display eligibility, and display a warning if there is an
inconsistency between service requested and eligibility.
Appointment Selection—The system shall have the capability to manage the appointment selection process.
Providers Per Schedule—The system shall have the capability to coordinate appointment scheduling based on resource availability.
Access Restrictions for Scheduling Appointments—The system shall have the capability to filter available appointments based on patient preferences, appointment availability, geographic considerations, facility, date range, resource type, and other special needs.
Waiting Lists—The system shall provide the capability to
process various lists.
The system shall have the capability to provide a waiting list
that appears when making or canceling appointments.
The system shall apply configurable business rules to the
management of a long-term appointment request list.
The system shall have the capability to maintain a list of patients that can fill a cancelled appointment on short notice.
The system shall have the capability to provide users the
ability to view available appointments beyond one year.
The system shall have the capability to maintain an electronic waiting list.
Appointment Rescheduling—The system shall identify appointments to be rescheduled and route them automatically to the reschedule status or pending list.
The system shall have the capability to disposition rebooking
of no-shows.
3.1.2
3.1.3
3.1.4
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.5.1
3.5.2
3.5.3
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3.5.5
3.6
3.6.1
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63432
Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
ATTACHMENT A—SCHEDULING—CENTRIC FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS—Continued
Business need
(BN)
Revised owner
No.
3.6.2
3.6.3
3.6.4
3.6.5
3.7
3.7.1
3.7.2
3.7.3
3.7.4
3.7.5
3.7.6
3.8
3.8.1
3.8.2
3.8.3
BN 4: Manage Appointment—Through the use of a calendar
view, the scheduler is able to view all providers, services,
facilities, and Veterans from a variety of calendar views
such as: daily, weekly, monthly with multiple providers,
services or facilities in view on a single screen.
Owner requirement (OWNR)
The system shall have the capability to link associated appointments so that if one is cancelled, all linked appointments can be dispositioned together.
The system shall be capable of finding and displaying available appointment slots due to appointment cancellations,
additional resources, etc. based upon configuration parameters.
The system shall have the capability to permit automatic rebooking of patients into comparable appointment slots.
The system shall have the capability to merge, purge, or distribute scheduled appointments from one resource to another.
Optimize Resource Utilization—The system shall incorporate
mechanisms that support optimization of resources.
The system shall have the capability to capture the coded
reason for cancellations/no-shows, e.g., death of patient,
lack of transportation, snow day.
The system shall have the capability to book or cancel recurring appointments (e.g., recurring appointments to
same resource) all at once.
The system shall have the capability to provide users the
capability to view available appointments based on configuration parameters.
The system shall have the capability to receive notification
of expired/deceased patients from authoritative source
and take appropriate action such as cancel future appointments/ancillary services/orders, etc.
The system shall have the capability to detect and notify
users if patients have similar appointments (service; provider) scheduled close together (e.g., possible duplicate or
both can be seen at one time).
The system shall check availability and status of all resources, including telecommunications system availability,
for a clinical video telehealth session.
Appointment Requests—The system shall have the capability to manage appointment requests.
The system shall have the ability to place Veterans on an
appointment list which is accessible throughout the scheduling process.
The system shall have the ability to merge, purge, or distribute scheduled appointments from one resource to another when emergency scheduling changes occur.
The system shall have the ability to capture attempts to contact patient.
4.1
The system shall have the ability to display co-pay requirements.
4.1.1
The scheduling system will display patient special needs
and preferences when an appointment is requested and
made.
The system should allow configuration to require approved
authorizations prior to processing an appointment request.
The system shall have the capability to create and manage
various appointment types.
The system shall have the capability to manage scheduling
process, such as overbooking, no-shows, cancels, reschedules, etc.
The system shall support the ability to change or edit appointments as necessary.
The system shall have the capability to configure and enforce business rules at the clinical service level, clinic
level, provider, and appointment type level (e.g., females
in Obstetrics/Gynecology clinic).
The system shall provide the ability for providers to request
appointments.
Linking—The system shall have the ability to automatically
link relevant appointments/resources.
4.1.2
4.1.3
4.1.4
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4.1.6
4.1.7
4.2
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Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
63433
ATTACHMENT A—SCHEDULING—CENTRIC FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS—Continued
Business need
(BN)
Revised owner
No.
4.2.1
4.2.2
4.2.3
4.2.4
4.2.5
4.2.6
4.2.7
4.3
4.3.1
4.3.2
4.3.3
4.3.4
4.3.5
4.3.6
4.4
4.4.1
4.4.2
4.4.3
4.4.4
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4.4.5
BN 5: Coordinate Associated and Occasions of Service—
The scheduling system shall provide schedulers the ability
to coordinate medical services throughout the VA, for
other agencies, with private practices, and for various delivery modes and causes.
Owner requirement (OWNR)
The system shall have the capability to provide alerts when
ancillary tests/specialty consults have been scheduled/
missed.
The system shall have the capability to search for the available appointment across multiple resources.
The system shall have the capability to provide information
to assist schedulers to consolidate appointments in one
day when possible (e.g., flag the fact that a patient is
scheduled to show up +X days of desired new appointment date).
The system shall have the capability to create, re-schedule,
or cancel recurring appointments all at once with appropriate desired date.
The system shall have the capability to define individual
schedules in terms of a single resource or as a pre-defined set of multiple resources.
The system shall have the capability to create groups of resources for scheduling a single event (e.g., room, equipment, and ancillary staff).
The system shall have the capability to cancel/restore resources and all linked appointments over multiple days
(not just one day at a time).
Assign and Configure Time Slots—The system shall provide
the capacity to assign and configure time slots for appointments.
The system shall have the capability to block time slots in
user-defined increments.
The system shall have the capability to present alerts and
reminders for a variety of reasons (e.g., eligibility not
verified, means test or insurance information out of date).
The system should have the capability to support automated
coordination and consolidation (e.g., onto one day) of multiple appointments per patient.
The system shall be capable of changing appointment types
for an appointment or a request at any time (within business constraints).
The system shall have the capability to configure the
amount of time allowed between appointments for a patient with multiple appointments.
The system shall not permit booking appointments into invalid time slots based upon configured business rules.
System Prompt Patient Notifications—The system will provide the ability to establish and provide appointment notifications.
The system shall have the capability to generate a list of future appointment reminders.
The system shall have the capability to produce appointment
notifications in a variety of formats (e.g., letter, phone, email, text messaging, pending appointment list, or card).
Each option shall be capable of being enabled or disabled
based upon patient preferences.
The system shall have the capability to filter/select appointment notifications based on user defined criteria.
The system shall have the capability to tailor appointment
notifications to meet specific clinic needs.
The system shall have the capability to provide configurable
notification requests such as: alerting staff when to contact patients about upcoming appointments.
5.1
External Data Exchange—The system shall have the capability to provide secure, automated interfaces with external
systems for data exchange.
5.1.1
The system shall have the ability to allow inter-facility scheduling, including non-VA facilities.
The system shall have the capability to link unscheduled
CPRS consults to the scheduling system for viewing.
5.1.2
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Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
ATTACHMENT A—SCHEDULING—CENTRIC FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS—Continued
Business need
(BN)
Revised owner
No.
5.1.3
5.2
5.2.1
5.2.2
5.2.3
5.2.4
5.3
5.3.1
5.3.2
5.3.3
5.3.4
5.4
BN 6: Manage Encounter of Care—The system will have the
capability to differentiate between encounter data and appointment data. The encounter data is not tracked by the
scheduler, but by providers in the electronic health record.
Owner requirement (OWNR)
The system shall have the capability to support coordinating
multiple appointments (e.g., provide information helpful in
scheduling all appointments on one day, multidisciplinary
team appointments).
The system shall provide the ability to allow display of primary and associate providers designated by facilities.
Ability to schedule a patient and resource on both the VistA
system where the health care resource is located and the
VistA system where the Veteran is located. This combination should be handled across VistA systems and time
zones as appropriate as a synchronized event.
The system shall provide the capability to capture and to select locations of patient and healthcare resources, including non-VA facilities (e.g., Veteran home, DoD, academic
affiliate, contract provider, etc.).
The system shall provide the ability to create, cancel and
update Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT) appointment sets
(patient and provider) as a single event (to prevent creation of orphans), including the following resources:
• CVT Rooms.
• CVT Equipment.
• Telepresenter.
The system shall provide the ability to modify a CVT appointment pair (patient and provider) as needed to prevent
creation of orphans or to correct errors.
Ancillary Services—The system shall have the capability to
accommodate different service types such as C&P, ancillary services and specialty services.
The system shall have the capability to link ancillary tests to
appointments (if they are changed, ancillary tests can be
updated without canceling order and re-ordering).
The system shall have the capability to link ancillary tests to
appointments.
The system shall provide the capability to establish links to
activities that require coordination with appointments (e.g.,
ancillary services).
The system shall have the capability to coordinate appointments with related ancillary services.
The system shall have the capability to provide a patient
preference field that informs clerks to special transportation concerns or other issues that limit availability (e.g.,
specific days and times).
6.1
The system shall have the capability to provide check-in,
check-out, cancellation reasons, and no-show data.
6.2
The system shall have the capability to provide facility-wide
visibility for a patient (i.e. checked-in or out, in treatment
room etc.).
The system shall provide statistics for appointments such
as: no-shows, left without being seen, etc.
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6.3
BN 7: Reporting—The system should have the capability to
produce, display and format reports, and should be able to
be saved in various formats such as PDF, CSV, etc. Reports containing personally identifiable information that are
required to be transmitted, retrieved, viewed, or printed
meet all VA Handbook 6500 requirements. These reports
represent the as-is process. It is expected that report requirements will be further defined with the business owners throughout the system development and acquisition
process.
7.1
7.1.1
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General Reporting Needs
Ad Hoc Reports—The system shall have the capability to
support user-created ad hoc report generation (without reprogramming) and provide the capability to save the report definition for future use and to save the reports in
various standard exportable formats.
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Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
63435
ATTACHMENT A—SCHEDULING—CENTRIC FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS—Continued
Business need
(BN)
Revised owner
No.
7.1.2
7.1.3
7.2
7.2.1
Owner requirement (OWNR)
The system shall have the capability to report on scheduling
measures and metrics across the VHA at many levels, including but not limited to National, VISN, Facility/Station/
Clinic/Community-Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC), and
shall have the capability to ‘‘roll-up’’ data from the most
granular level (i.e. clinic or station level) to the highest
level for reporting purposes (i.e. National level) as defined
by the business.
The system shall have the capability to establish and ensure
the use of consistent metrics and measures across different areas of the VHA; i.e., ensure that all business level
facilities measure, capture and report the same data in the
same ways.
Operational reports are generated by a facility, VISN, station
or clinic to facilitate day-to-day operations. These can
range from printing daily appointment lists for a clinic to
printing a listing of patients who missed appointments or
who left without being seen. Operational reports are also
generated to track performance metrics, access to care
metrics, utilization of staff, workload measurement/workload leveling and workload planning.
The system shall have the capability to generate and display
a work list based on unfulfilled appointments at the operational level to capture the source of a request, type of request, and status of a request along a timeline. Work list
(queue) is automatically updated based on tasks that
need to be completed by the scheduler.
ATTACHMENT B—SCHEDULING-RELATED AND VA-SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS AND POINT ALLOCATIONS
Requirement
Description
1 ........................
The system shall have the capability to provide for the enforcement and modification of national-level data standards including procedure and diagnosis codes as currently defined in VistA.
Flexible Schedule Component Organization—The solution shall have a mechanism to oversee and manage potential impacts to the system as a result of policies, directives, etc.
The system shall provide the flexibility to accommodate new functional requirements based on business needs
(e.g., primary care home (PACT) based care appointments, telehealth, etc.).
The system shall have the capability to alert VA staff when appointments are scheduled about patient scheduling
reliability (show/no-show rate) averaged over a period of time configured by the authorized end user.
The system will, when managing the appointment selection process, shall have the capability to capture the desired
date for the appointment.
The system shall allow for administrative closure of consults .........................................................................................
The system shall have the ability to integrate unscheduled CPRS consults with the scheduling system .....................
The system shall associate each appointment type with the correct DSS stop code/credit stop; see: https://www1.va.
gov/vhapublications/ViewPublication.asp?pub_ID=1788.
Telehealth—The scheduling system shall provide the capability for national Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT) scheduling which ensures resources at multiple ends of a telehealth visit are coordinated with the patient across different VistA systems and capture workload data.
The system shall have the ability to capture whether appointment is scheduled vs. unscheduled to support travel reimbursement determination.
The system shall provide reports for consults obtained outside of VHA ........................................................................
The system shall have the ability to disposition for travel reimbursement ......................................................................
The system shall have the capability to generate reports containing scheduling data from both the solution application and legacy systems.
The system will collect currently used wait time metrics including create date and desired date, scheduled appointment date and completed appointment date.
National Reports: National reporting is generated by national program managers, VISN management and by facility
management to review performance, trends, analytics, as well as access to care and payment issues. National
reports are populated by ‘‘rolling up’’ information from the various stations, clinics, and facilities across VHA.
The system shall have the ability to capture and provide the data necessary to conduct capacity planning through
complete visibility into supply (provider, equipment, facility, support staff) and demand (enrolled and/or empaneled
Veteran requests for appointments).
The system shall have the capability to generate wait time metrics and measures based on clinic operational
metrics.
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on cost reporting metrics and measures (i.e. DSS
stop codes and other financial metrics and measures as defined by the business) that are tied to the scheduling
appointment. Examples of existing reports include, but are not limited to the following:.
• DSS Outpatient Encounter and Workload ............................................................................................................
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on provider utilization and provider credentialing .....
2 ........................
3 ........................
4 ........................
5.1 .....................
5.2 .....................
5.3 .....................
6 ........................
7.1 .....................
7.2 .....................
7.3 .....................
8 ........................
9.1 .....................
9.2 .....................
9.3 .....................
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9.3.1 ..................
9.3.2 ..................
9.3.3 ..................
9.3.4 ..................
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Points
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3
5
5
3
5
1
2
5
5
3
5
3
3
5
3
5
3
3
63436
Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
ATTACHMENT B—SCHEDULING-RELATED AND VA-SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS AND POINT ALLOCATIONS—Continued
Requirement
Description
9.3.5 ..................
The system shall have the capability to generate performance reports. Performance measures include access
measures, clinical measures and scheduling measures.
The system shall have the capability to generate patient complaint tracking and status metrics and measures reports. Examples of existing reports which work now and must continue to work include (but are not limited to) the
following types of reports:
• Survey of Healthcare Experiences of Patients (SHEP) Inpatient and Outpatient Survey Reports.
• Patient Advocate Profiles.
• Number of Complaint Issues by Type of Care Patient Advocate Tracking System (PATS).
• Summary of Responses to Patient Complaint Data in Outpatient SHEP (OQP).
• Compliments/Complaints as % of Total (PATS) Report.
• All Complaint Issue Trending (PATS).
• Complaint Clinical Appeal Data (PATS).
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on metrics and measures related to Clinic Resources as defined by the business.
The system shall have the capability to generate on-demand reports containing current data to be presented to
Congress.
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on metrics and measures related to Mental Health
appointments.
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on Workload and Utilization Management metrics ...
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on unfulfilled appointment request ............................
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on metrics and measures related to Workload management at the local level.
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on metrics and measures related to patient information relevant to supporting the episode of care, the continuity of care, and missed opportunities of all patients.
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on metrics and measures related to appointments
and clinics, including availability and utilization, case load, cancellations, check-ins, general/random appointment
information, notifications and letters, and audits by supervisors.
The system shall have the capability to generate QA reports to ensure the proper disposition of incomplete appointment information.
Examples of current reports that rely upon this data and must be maintained include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Encounter Activity Report.
• Encounter ‘Action Required’ Report.
• Means Test/Eligibility/Enrollment Report.
• Outpatient Encounter Workload Statistics.
• Performance Monitor Summary Report.
• Performance Monitor Detailed Report.
• Trend of Facility Uniques by 12 Month Date Ranges.
• Error Listing.
• Transmission History Report—Full.
• Transmission History for Patient.
• Scheduling/PCE Bad Pointer Count.
• Alpha List of Incomplete Encounters.
• Incomplete Encounter Error Report.
• Summary Report—IEMM.
• Correct Incomplete Encounters.
• Provider/Diagnosis Report.
• Visit Report by Transmitted OPT Encounter.
The system shall have the capability to generate reports based on metrics and measures related to diagnostic and
procedural information that ranks each by frequency and for a specific date range. Examples of current reports
that must be maintained include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Outpatient Diagnosis/Procedure Frequency Report
• Management Report for Ambulatory Procedures
9.3.6
9.3.7 ..................
9.3.8 ..................
9.3.9 ..................
9.3.10 ................
9.3.11 ................
9.4.1 ..................
9.4.2 ..................
9.4.3 ..................
9.4.4 ..................
9.4.5 ..................
Points
5
3
4
5
5
5
5
3
5
5
5
3
ATTACHMENT C—NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
NFR characteristic
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3.1
Functionality ................
NFR sub-characteristic
NFR Statement
.............................................
3.1.1.8 The Scheduling Solution shall be capable of providing configurable error
messages, work flows, and alerts.
3.1.1.11 The Scheduling Solution shall display appointment time with appropriate
time zones.
3.1.3.2 The Scheduling Solution shall support content transportation standards
and implementation specifications set forth in 45 CFR 170.205.
3.1.3.5 The Scheduling Solution shall be capable of navigating seamlessly among
related modules throughout the end-to-end scheduling process.
3.1.5.1 The Scheduling Solution shall be able to support secure messaging.
3.1.2
3.1.3
17:32 Oct 15, 2012
Interoperability ........
3.1.5
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Accuracy .................
Security ...................
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Federal Register / Vol. 77, No. 200 / Tuesday, October 16, 2012 / Notices
63437
ATTACHMENT C—NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS—Continued
NFR characteristic
NFR sub-characteristic
3.3
Usability .......................
3.3.1
Understandability ....
3.5
Maintainability ..............
3.5.1
Analyzability ............
3.5.4
Testability ................
BILLING CODE 8320–01–P
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS
AFFAIRS
Notice of Extension of Public
Comment Period for Environmental
Impact Statement for the San
Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical
Center (SFVAMC) Long Range
Development Plan (LRDP)
Dated: October 11, 2012.
Robert C. McFetridge,
Director, Regulation Policy and Management
(02REG), Office of the General Counsel.
Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA).
ACTION:
[FR Doc. 2012–25409 Filed 10–15–12; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8320–01–P
Notice of Extension of Comment
Period.
The Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) is extending the public
comment period for the Environmental
Impact Statement for the San Francisco
Veterans Affairs Medical Center
(SFVAMC) Long Range Development
Plan (LRDP). VA published a notice in
the Federal Register on August 17, 2012
(77 FR 49865), that provided for a
public comment period ending on
October 16, 2012. This notice extends
the public comment period to October
31, 2012.
DATES: Several individuals representing
federal and community organizations
have requested an extension of the
public comment period. The Agency has
decided to act in accordance with these
requests; therefore, comments on the
Draft Environmental Impact Statement
(EIS) for the SFVAMC LRDP will now
be accepted through October 31, 2012.
Comments received or postmarked after
October 31, 2012 will be considered to
the extent practicable.
ADDRESSES: Submit written comments
on the SFVAMC LRDP Draft EIS through
www.regulations.gov. Please refer to:
‘‘SFVAMC LRDP Draft EIS’’ in any
correspondence.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Chief Engineer, Engineering Service
SUMMARY:
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3.3.1.1 The Scheduling Solution shall be self-descriptive and explain itself through
cues (e.g., screen, area, and group titles indicating the purpose of the respective
interface element; on-screen instructions/diagrams; explanations/answers that are
available on request; no implicit assumptions about how users are expected to
behave that would contradict users’ expectations; and feedback is given on user
actions, system actions, and the system state.
3.3.3.2 The Scheduling Solution shall be usable across multiple operating systems, browsers, and platforms.
3.5.1.1 The Scheduling Solution shall be capable of providing transaction logs,
error logs and audit trails for pertinent scheduling transactions.
3.5.4.1 The Scheduling Solution shall provide criteria to enable the measurement
to test pieces of code or functionality, or a provision added in software so that
test plans and scripts can be executed systematically.
(138), San Francisco Veterans Affairs
Medical Center, 4150 Clement Street,
San Francisco, CA 94121 or by
telephone, (415) 221–4810, extension
2009. The SFVAMC LRDP and Draft EIS
are available for viewing on the
SFVAMC Web site: https://
www.sanfrancisco.va.gov/planning.
[FR Doc. 2012–25408 Filed 10–15–12; 8:45 am]
AGENCY:
NFR Statement
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DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS
AFFAIRS
Advisory Committee on Structural
Safety of Department of Veterans
Affairs Facilities, Notice of Meeting
The Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA) gives notice under the Federal
Advisory Committee Act, 5 U.S.C. App.
2, that a meeting of the Advisory
Committee on Structural Safety of
Department of Veterans Affairs
Facilities will be held on October 29–30,
2012, in Room 6W405, 425 I Street NW.,
Washington, DC. The session on
October 29 will be from 9 a.m. until 5
p.m., and the session on October 30 will
be from 8:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. The
meeting is open to the public.
The purpose of the Committee is to
advise the Secretary of Veterans Affairs
on matters of structural safety in the
construction and remodeling of VA
facilities and to recommend standards
for use by VA in the construction and
alteration of its facilities.
On October 29, the Committee will
review developments in the fields of fire
safety issues and structural design as
they relate to seismic and other natural
hazards impact on the safety of
buildings. On October 30, the
Committee will receive appropriate
briefings and presentations on current
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seismic, natural hazards, and fire safety
issues that are particularly relevant to
facilities owned and leased by the
Department. The Committee will also
discuss appropriate structural and fire
safety recommendations for inclusion in
VA’s standards.
No time will be allocated for receiving
oral presentations from the public.
However, members of the public may
submit written statements for review by
the Committee to Krishna K. Banga,
Senior Structural Engineer, Facilities
Standard Service, Office of Construction
& Facilities Management (003C2B),
Department of Veterans Affairs, 425 I
Street NW., Washington, DC 20001, or
by email at Krishna.banga@va.gov. Any
member of the public wishing to attend
the meeting or seeking additional
information should contact Mr. Banga at
(202) 632–4694.
Dated: October 10, 2012.
By Direction of the Secretary:
Vivian Drake,
Committee Management Officer.
[FR Doc. 2012–25329 Filed 10–15–12; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8320–01–P
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS
AFFAIRS
Advisory Committee on Disability
Compensation, Notice of Meeting
The Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA) gives notice under the Federal
Advisory Committee Act, 5 U.S.C. App.
2, that the Advisory Committee on
Disability Compensation will meet on
October 26, 2012, at the Veterans Health
Administration National Conference
Center, 2011 Crystal Drive, Suite 150A,
Arlington, Virginia. The session will
begin at 8:30 a.m. and end at 4 p.m. The
meeting is open to the public.
The purpose of the Committee is to
advise the Secretary of Veterans Affairs
on the maintenance and periodic
readjustment of the VA Schedule for
E:\FR\FM\16OCN1.SGM
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]]>Agencies
[Federal Register Volume 77, Number 200 (Tuesday, October 16, 2012)]
[Notices]
[Pages 63424-63437]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2012-25408]
=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS
Announcement of Competition Under the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2011: Veterans Medical Appointment Scheduling
System
AGENCY: Department of Veterans Affairs.
Action: Notice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: To encourage development of systems that help Veterans
schedule appointments to receive care from the Veterans Health
Administration and to reduce risks in the future procurement and
deployment of those systems, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA)
announces a prize contest under Section 105 of the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2011, Public Law 111-358 (2011), 15 USC 3719
(the ``Act'').
DATES: Entries will be accepted until 10:59 p.m. EDT on March 1, 2013.
Winners will be announced on or about 90 days after the entry deadline.
ADDRESSES: The official contest Web site is https://vascheduling.challenge.gov. Contestants must register via the official
contest Web site as provided in Section 4 of the Rules set forth in
this notice. Entries must be submitted electronically as specified in
Section 5 of the Rules.
FOR INFORMATION CONTACT: Michael A. Moore, Special Assistant to Chief
Technology Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Veterans
Affairs, 810 Vermont Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20420; (202) 461-5764.
(This is not a toll-free number.) Also, see Section 11, below.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Introduction
VA uses the Medical Scheduling Package (MSP), a component in its
VistA electronic health record (EHR) system, to perform multiple
interrelated functions to bring patients, clinicians and other
resources together so care can be delivered. The MSP also captures data
which allows VA to measure, manage and improve access to care, quality
of care, operating efficiency and operating and capital resources.
VA's current MSP is more than 25 years old. It does not meet
current
[[Page 63425]]
requirements and does not provide the flexibility to support new and
emerging models of care. VA will be replacing the MSP.
Using the authority of the Act and this contest, VA will obtain
information that will allow it to understand various risks and thus
reduce risks inherent in the procurement and deployment of highly
complex mission critical software which integrates with VA's VistA
system.
VA's Health Delivery System
VA's Veterans Health Administration (VHA) operates one of the
largest integrated health delivery systems in the United States,
delivering comprehensive care to approximately six million Veterans
through a network of health care facilities owned and staffed by VA,
academic medical affiliates and other contracted providers, contracted
networks, and episodic fee-for-service purchases. Veterans scheduled
approximately 80 million outpatient clinical visits--more than 300,000
each working day in FY 2011.
VA delivers care through 21 Veterans Integrated Services Networks
(VISNs) which administer:
152 hospitals, sometimes known as VA Medical Centers or
VAMCs,
971 outpatient clinics--most of which are extensions of a
parent hospital, and
133 community living centers which deliver skilled nursing
and extended care.
VHA sites of care are distributed across the United States and
Puerto Rico with additional clinics in Guam and the Philippines.
Veterans are administratively aligned with the hospital of their choice
but may receive care through any hospital.
VA's care delivery model is centered in the Patient Aligned Care
Team (PACT), VA's implementation of the Patient Centered Medical Home.
PACTs consist of multidisciplinary clinical and support
staff that deliver all primary care and coordinate the remainder of
patients' needs, including specialty care.
Veterans assigned to a PACT may schedule appointments with
any member of the team.
Routine appointments with specialists are often scheduled
based on a PACT referral; specialty care referrals can also come from
clinicians providing inpatient care, the Emergency Department,
community providers, or patients themselves.
Veterans generally schedule their own follow-up
appointments with specialists or specialty care services without the
intervention of the PACT.
Appointment scheduling is currently performed primarily via
telephone, in person, or mail. The intervention of a VA employee is
currently required to make appointments. VA needs to enable Veterans to
schedule their own appointments electronically via online and mobile
devices.
VA also needs to schedule and coordinate care across internal and
external administrative, or system, boundaries. As examples:
Veterans may choose to live in different states at
different times of the year and need to make appointments to receive
care where they live when they need it.
A clinician who can provide needed care for a Veteran may
be located at a different hospital, in different VISN or at an external
academic affiliate or contract medical group.
A physician who will be examining a Veteran to determine
nature and extent of a service-related disability may also be located
at a different hospital, VISN, or be delivering examination services
under contract.
Telemedicine technologies can support care delivery by a
clinician who is physically located at a different hospital or even in
a different VISN than the physical location where the Veteran will
receive the care.
PACTS need to coordinate care with non-VA community
providers when Veterans choose to receive care both inside and outside
the VA system.
Support services such as non-VA transportation services
must be coordinated.
VA currently relies on the MSP to perform non-scheduling functions
including workload data capture and a broad range of workload and other
management reports.
VA's Technical Infrastructure
VA's current medical MSP is a component (application) of its VistA
electronic health record (EHR) system.
The MSP is tightly integrated with VistA; it reads data from more
than 130 other VistA applications and has read/write functionality with
more than 30 additional applications.
VistA systems are localized at the hospital level and will remain
so for at least the near-term future. Each hospital operates a separate
instance of VistA. Portions of the VistA code are identical in each
instance; different instances of VistA may have different interfaces
between the MSP and other VistA applications.
Any replacement product must not negatively impact any current
applications that interface with the MSP or its data.
Replacing VA's Medical Scheduling Software
VA intends to replace the current MSP with a scheduling product \1\
which is a standards-based, modular, extensible and scalable, certified
as compliant and fully interoperable with the production version of
VistA now held by the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent
(OSEHRA), https://www.osehra.org/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ As used in this notice, ``product'' means either a discrete
software module which is installed on VA servers or a software
service.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The replacement product must effectively perform VA's scheduling-
centric and scheduling-related legacy business functions. It must also
demonstrate it can meet non-functional requirements including
integration with multiple instances of VistA.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The replacement product will, as a part of the overall VistA
EHR, deliver privacy, security, data integrity, patient
accessibility, interoperability and other services required by
federal law, regulations and VA policy. Many of these services are
delivered by other components of VistA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Role of This Contest in Replacement of VA's Medical Scheduling Software
This contest will achieve two significant goals in replacement of
VA's MSP.
First, it will mitigate risks which VA has identified as
contributing to the failure of previous attempts to replace the MSP.
Second, it will encourage commercial software vendors to
actively engage in development of solutions, by providing a basis on
which VA can rate proposals in any subsequent procurement of a
replacement for the MSP.
Risk Mitigation. VA's previous attempts to replace the MSP module
in VistA were not successful. Assessments of the reasons for these
failures identified three critical risks that VA will mitigate via this
contest:
Market Research: One of the reasons VA was not successful
was lack of sufficient knowledge about the actual capabilities of
vendors to meet VA's business needs. Via this contest, VA will obtain
valuable information about industry's current ability to meet VA's
business needs via actual demonstration of product capabilities in a
VA-defined test environment. Additionally, VA will be able to assess
industry's ability to perform not just scheduling-centric functions
offered by most robust scheduling products, but also scheduling-related
workload-capture and data-reporting functions that are
[[Page 63426]]
unique to VA. This contest will also provide VA with valuable
information about changes in business workflows that will be needed
when a replacement product is deployed.
Integration issues: Another reason why earlier attempts
were not successful was VA's inability to effectively integrate
replacement software with the VistA system. Since then, VA has elected
to place VistA in the open source community and to prefer software
products which are openly architected to integrate with VistA. Via this
contest, VA will be able to assess industry's ability to technically
integrate its products with Open Source VistA.
Test environment: Analyses for the previous lack of
success also found that VA was unable to effectively test replacement
software to assure it met functional and technical requirements. To
support this contest VA will develop and deploy a test environment,
judge contest entries using that test environment, assess the
effectiveness of the test environment, then use the results of that
assessment to adjust the test environment as needed to support testing
in a procurement of a deployable scheduling replacement product.
Via this contest, VA will obtain the needed information in a lower-
risk-of-failure context than if directly procuring a deployable
replacement product. VA believes the information it obtains via direct
evaluation of entries in this contest will be superior in quality and
can be obtained in significantly less time via this contest route than
by custom development. VA also believes the aggregate cost of the
contest is highly competitive with the cost of acquiring the same types
of information via other arrangements. If industry is not able to
demonstrate it can meet VA's needs then no prize will be awarded.
Effect on Subsequent Procurement. VA anticipates that compatibility
with Open Source VistA will be among the requirements in any subsequent
procurement of a replacement for the MSP. Demonstration of open source
compatibility in this contest may be taken into consideration in the
rating of proposals in any subsequent procurement.
Contest Requirements and Rules
1. Subject of the Contest. The goal of this contest is to encourage
creation of systems that help Veterans make appointments to receive
outpatient and ambulatory care \3\ from the Veterans Health
Administration. VA also seeks to obtain information which will allow it
to reduce the risks inherent in procurement and deployment of a
replacement medical scheduling product.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Scheduling of inpatient, surgical, and extended nursing care
is excluded.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Numbers and Amounts of Prizes.
a. VA will award monetary prizes of as much as $3 Million to as
many as three entrants that deliver demonstration software or service
which the judges determine delivers the required functionality and is
compatible with Open Source VistA, as described in this notice.
b. Judges will determine the number and amount of monetary prizes.
Judges may determine that no prize will be awarded.
c. VA may consider compatibility with Open Source VistA as
demonstrated in this contest when considering proposals in any
subsequent procurement of MSP-related product(s).
3. Basis on which a winner will be selected. (See section 6 for
judging procedures and point system.) Winners will be selected from
entries that demonstrate \4\ to the satisfaction of the judges that
they:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Winning products will be used for demonstration only and
will not be deployed in VA facilities except for testing or
demonstration purposes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
a. Perform as required by these rules while interfaced with VA-
provided VistA instances running on VA-provided virtual machines.
Performance with other versions or instances of VistA will not be
considered.
b. Perform each of the scheduling-centric business functions
defined by VA on Attachment A to this notice, including particularly:
1. Automated scheduling of an appointment at any VA site from any
location by a Veteran using online or mobile devices or by a VA
employee acting as a scheduler,\5\ and
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ See, e.g., Attachment A, sections 1.4.1, 1.4.5, 2.7, 3
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Where semi-automated scheduling is performed, use of a calendar-
view format presentation of available resource(s), with support for
point-and-click scheduling when the calendar view shows needed
resources to be available.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ See, e.g., Attachment A, sections 1.2.5, 3, 3.5, 3.7.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
c. Perform all or some of the designated Scheduling-Related/VA-
Specific business functions set forth on Attachment B to this notice,
including functions related to workload capture, data analysis and
reporting, operational and capital planning and travel reimbursement.
d. Perform each of the non-functional requirements set forth on
Attachment C to this notice.
e. Do so using open APIs, including open source code for the
interfaces between the product and VistA, and at the option of the
entrant, using open source modules to support some or all of the
product's additional functions. Note: Entries that consist of
proprietary code are not precluded, so long as interfaces with VistA
use open APIs and the software implementing the interfaces is made
available as open source code.
4. Registration for this Contest.
a. Not later than 10:59 p.m. EST February 1, 2013, potential
entrants must request registration for the contest by submitting a
letter via the ``Submissions'' section of the official contest Web
site, https://vascheduling.challenge.gov. The letter must be signed by
the entrant if an individual or by a corporate officer if the entrant
is a corporation. The letter must:
1. Attest that the potential entrant is eligible to participate in
this contest per the requirements of this notice and the Act,
2. Attest that disqualifying factors for participation in the
contest, as defined in this notice and the Act, do not exist,
3. Contain a listing (which may be an attachment) of all owners of
all intellectual property (IP) which the potential entrant will
incorporate or use in its entry,
4. Contain a listing (which may be an attachment) of all components
of the entry that the potential entrant will designate as open source,
5. Attest that the potential entrant is the owner or licensee of
any and all intellectual property (IP) to be incorporated in the entry,
and by virtue of such ownership or license has full right and authority
to authorize, and does authorize VA (and any of VA's consultants,
contractors or collaborating federal agencies) to reproduce, test,
demonstrate and use such IP for any purpose related to this contest,
including judging,
6. Attest that the potential entrant:
a. Is the owner or licensee of any and all IP in open source
modules designated by the entrant to be incorporated in the entry;
b. Has full right and authority to convey all rights set forth in
an Apache 2.0 license \7\ in the designated open source modules; and
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Text available at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
c. Will, if selected as a winner in this contest, apply the Apache
2.0 license to the designated source modules and contribute the
software to OSEHRA.
[[Page 63427]]
7. Attest that the potential entrant agrees it is bound by all
rules, assumes all risks, and has acquired or will acquire any
insurance required by this notice.
8. State whether the potential entry will be an installable
software, software as a service (SaaS) or contain components of both,
and whether the contestant intends to supply resources external to the
virtual machines to be provided by VA to support or execute the
contestant's entry (e.g., servers that support SaaS), and identifying
those resources.
9. State the name, business and email address and telephone number
of the individual who is the designated contact for and who will
receive all communications related to this contest.
a. The letter, attachments, and any additional written materials
must be submitted electronically in a format fully compatible with both
Microsoft Word 2007 and Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.
b. Letters which do not include each of the items stated in
paragraph 4(a) and in the required formats will not be effective to
register the potential entrant.
c. At the option of the potential entrant, letters may be
accompanied by additional written materials describing the potential
entrant or the entry not exceeding ten 8\1/2\ by 11 inch pages in
length. These materials will be in a format fully compatible with
Microsoft Word 2007 or Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.
d. Letters and all attachments are subject to file size limits of
the official contest Web site.
5. Procedures for Submitting Entries; Confidentiality of Entries.
a. Potential entrants that submit a letter meeting the requirements
set forth in Section 4, above, will be registered for this contest.
1. Registered contestants will be sent an email at the address
provided by the contestant. The email will contain instructions on how
to access VA-supplied virtual machine space to integrate, configure,
and test their solution prior to submission as an entry.
2. Depending on the number of potential entrants that register for
this contest and the ready availability of virtual machines, there may
be a delay between submission of a letter requesting registration and
an email accepting the letter. There may also be delay in actual
availability of virtual machines. Potential entrants assume all risk of
such delays and the possibility that any delay may leave them
insufficient time before the entry deadline to fully integrate,
configure and test their solution.
b. Each contestant will be supplied with three virtual machines.
1. Each machine will be loaded with a sample instance of VistA with
sample data, each with a different patch level and each set to operate
in a different time zone. This will permit configuration and testing of
multiple-site scheduling functions.
2. Two of the virtual machines will use the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 6.1 (64 bit) operating system. The third machine will use the
Windows Server 2008 (32 bit) operating system.
3. Contestants may begin installation and testing of their product
immediately upon receipt of access to the virtual space.
c. Contestants may provide resources in addition to the virtual
machines provided by VA, e.g., servers which support SaaS.
1. Integration of all external resources with the virtual machines
provided by VA will be the sole responsibility of the contestant.
2. All expenses related to any additional resources will be at the
sole cost and expense of the contestant.
d. VA will post Screening Use Cases in the ``Updates'' section on
the contest Web site, https://vascheduling.challenge.gov. These Use
Cases will be used in the evaluation of the functional and technical
capabilities of entries.
e. Each contestant will integrate their solution with the provided
VistA instances, and will provide test plans and automated test scripts
that demonstrate performance of the functional requirements on
Attachments A, B, and C in the context of the Screening Use Cases.
f. Test scripts must meet the following requirements:
1. Scripts must be submitted as open source software, in accordance
with the criteria posted on the contest Web site, including
documentation and OSI-approved open source licenses, with the Apache
2.0 license applied to all code. The submittal must include
instructions for execution and a copy of results for comparison.
2. Scripts must operate in the OSEHRA CTEST environment.
3. Scripts must be repeatable, that is, they must include separated
executable automated code that restores all data values to their
previous state, allowing the test to be rerun with consistent results.
4. If any changes are made to the provided VistA instances, those
changes must also be submitted as open source code, compliant with the
criteria posted on the contest Web site including documentation and
OSI-approved open source licenses, with the Apache 2.0 license applied
to all code. This includes the VistA-side components of any interface
code, such as Applications Program Interfaces (APIs).
5. Contestant must submit repeatable open source test scripts for
all specified use cases in accordance with the instructions posted on
the contest Web site, with instructions and results from their testing.
g. Each registered contestant that wishes its or their product to
be formally entered in the contest shall, not later than 10:59 p.m. EST
March 1, 2013, submit a letter via the ``Submissions'' section of the
official contest Web site, https://vascheduling.challenge.gov. The
letter must be signed by the entrant if an individual or by a corporate
officer if the entrant is a corporation. The letter must state:
1. The registered contestant has completed installation of its or
their product, test plans and automated test scripts on the virtual
servers provided by VA, has completed testing to its or their
satisfaction, and formally submits the contents of the virtual machines
as their entry in the contest.
2. The letter submitted by the registered contestant at the time of
registration is incorporated by reference and the contents of that
letter are in all respects ratified and confirmed. Provided, however,
that contestants may at their option amend the contents of the
following sections of the registration letter:
a. Section 4(a)(3), relating to a listing of the owners of all IP
incorporated into the contestant's entry;
b. Section 4(a)(4), relating to the components of the entry which
the contestant will designate as open source;
c. Section 4(a)(8), relating to whether the entry is installable
software, SaaS, or contains components of both and whether resources
external to the VA-supplied virtual machines is or will be used by the
contestant to support or execute contestant's entry.
d. Section 4(a)(9), relating to contact information.
e. Section 4(d), relating to optional descriptive materials.
3. If resources external to the VA-supplied virtual machines is or
will be used by a contestant to support or execute contestant's entry,
the letter shall also state: ``[I/We] certify that from and after the
submission of this letter until the announcement of the contest
winners, no changes whatsoever will be made to any of the external
software or resources [I/we] have designated to support or execute [my/
our] entry.''
4. Registered contestants that do not submit a letter as required
by this subsection will be deemed to have withdrawn from the contest
and the
[[Page 63428]]
contents of virtual machines assigned to them will not be judged.
5. Letters formally submitting entries for judging, along with all
attachments, are subject to file size limits of the official contest
Web site.
h. All virtual machine environments will be frozen as of 10:59 p.m.
EST March 1, 2013. If a registered contestant has submitted a letter as
provided in section 5(g), then the contestant's entry in this contest
will be deemed to be the code and other content installed on the
virtual machines at the time the virtual machine environment is frozen,
as well as the code and other contest installed on external resources
if any, at that time.
i. Submissions or entries will not be readily available to other
entrants or to the public. These materials may, however, be disclosable
as determined solely by VA pursuant to its obligation to comply with
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552.
6. Judging of Entries.
a. Method. VA may use any technical means it determines suitable to
evaluate any entry, award points and determine any winner in this
contest. All or any part of the evaluation may be conducted by third
parties under VA supervision. VA may use an entrant's submitted testing
scripts, routines and software to perform all or part of any evaluation
and judging. VA may, at its option, request an entrant to demonstrate
its or their entry either in-person or via web-based technologies.
b. Technical Evaluation. VA contemplates it will judge entries as
follows.
1. An entry will first be evaluated to determine Open Source VistA
Compatibility, i.e.:
a. Whether it is compatible with the three separate VistA instances
on the VA-supplied virtual machines, and
b. Whether the interfaces between the product and VistA are based
on software code that either is or can become open source.
VA contemplates substantial portions of this evaluation will be
conducted by OSEHRA. Any entry that does not demonstrate Open Source
VistA Compatibility to the satisfaction of the judges will be
disqualified and will not be further considered for a prize.
2. An entry which demonstrates Open Source VistA Compatibility will
then be evaluated to determine whether it performs all Non-Functional
requirements set forth on Attachment C. Any entry which does not
demonstrate to the satisfaction of the judges that it can perform the
Non-Functional Requirements on Attachment C will be disqualified and
will not be further considered for a prize.
3. Entries which demonstrate Open Source VistA Compatibility and
also demonstrate they meet Non-functional Requirements will be deemed
to be Technically Compatible.
c. Functional Evaluation. VA will evaluate an entry that has
demonstrated Technical Compatibility to determine whether it can
perform the Scheduling-centric functions defined on Attachment A. An
entry that does not demonstrate to the satisfaction of the judges that
it can perform the Scheduling-centric functions defined on Attachment A
will be disqualified and will not be further considered for a prize.
d. VA-Specific Functions. An entry that demonstrates Technical
Compatibility and also demonstrates it can perform all of the
Scheduling-centric functions on Attachment A will then be evaluated to
determine whether it can perform any of the Scheduling-related or VA-
specific functions defined on Attachment B.
1. Judges will award the designated points for each function
defined on Attachment B that they determine is performed by the entry.
2. A maximum of 120 points can be awarded for performance of
functions defined on Attachment B.
e. Open Source Content. An entry that demonstrates Technical
Compatibility and also demonstrates it can perform all of the
Scheduling-centric functions on Attachment A will also be evaluated by
the judges to determine the extent to which it uses software modules,
as designated by the entrant, which are or will become open source.
1. Interfaces between the product and VistA will not be considered
in this phase of the judging, as they are a required component of Open
Source Compatibility.
2. Judges will evaluate the significance of the designated open
source modules in delivering required functions. For example, judges
may determine that modules that provide common platform services or
business logic are more significant than modules that deliver the
presentation layer.
3. Judges may award a maximum of 30 points for significant open
source modules incorporated in an entry.
Points awarded by the judges will determine the winners of this
contest.
7. Eligibility. To be eligible to participate in this contest and
win a prize:
a. Entrants must register for this contest as set forth in Section
4 and submit a letter formally entering their product in the contest as
set forth in Section 5.
b. If an individual, an entrant must be a citizen of or permanent
resident of the United States. If an entity, an entrant must be
incorporated in and maintain a primary place of business in the United
States.
c. An entrant may not be a Federal entity or Federal employee
acting in the scope of the employee's employment.
d. Entrants shall be responsible for obtaining insurance they deem
necessary to cover claims by any third party for death, bodily injury,
or property damage or loss resulting from an activity carried out in
connection with or participation in this contest.
e. Entrants must have complied with all requirements of this notice
and all requirements established by the Act.
f. By registering for or submitting an entry in this contest,
contestants and entrants agree to assume any and all risks and waive
any claims against the Federal Government and its related entities
(except in the case of willful misconduct) for any injury, death,
damage, or loss of property, revenue or profits, whether direct,
indirect, or consequential, arising from their participation in this
contest, whether the injury, death, damage, or loss arises through
negligence of otherwise. Provided, however, that by registering or
submitting an entry, contestants and entrants do not waive claims
against VA arising out of the unauthorized use or disclosure by the
agency of the intellectual property, trade secrets, or confidential
information of the entrant.
8. Intellectual Property (IP).
a. VA is not responsible for a registered contestant's or entrant's
lack of compliance with copyright, trademark, patent or other Federal
law. Contestants and entrants will hold harmless, defend, and indemnify
the Federal Government and any agency or component thereof from and
against any suit, claim, demand, liability, damages, costs and expenses
(including attorneys' fees and costs of defense), of whatever nature,
whether groundless, false or fraudulent, arising out of any use,
licensing or relicensing of any IP that is incorporated in the
entrant's entry.
b. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing and in
explanation but not limitation of sections 4(a)(5) and 4(a)(6),
contestants and entrants are responsible for obtaining all third-party
licenses required to allow the VA and its contractors to receive any
and all IP installed on any virtual machine, to run any and all testing
software or scripts, and to demonstrate an entrant's product. Windows
and Linux operating systems will be accepted; however contestants and
entrants will need to obtain proper licenses for running any Windows in
[[Page 63429]]
any resource external to the VA-supplied virtual machines that is or
will be used by the contestant to support or execute contestant's
entry.
c. The winner(s) of this contest will, in consideration of the
prize to be awarded, apply the Apache 2.0 license to the designated
open source modules (including the interfaces between winner's product
and VistA) and contribute the modules to OSEHRA.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ https://www.osehra.org/page/osehra-code-repository.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
d. VA may in its sole and absolute discretion choose to negotiate
with any entrant to acquire, license, use or convey any other
intellectual property developed in connection with this contest.
9. Judges and Judging Procedures.
a. Subject to the requirements of 15 U.S.C. 3719(k), the VA
Assistant Secretary for Information Technology, acting on behalf and
with the authority of the Secretary of VA, will appoint one or more
qualified individuals to act as judges of this contest and may appoint
himself as a judge. Judges may include individuals from outside VA,
including from the private sector. Judges will operate in a transparent
manner.
b. A judge may not have a personal or financial interest in, or be
an employee, officer, director, or agent of any entity that is a
registered entrant in this contest, and may not have a familial or
financial relationship with an individual who is a registered entrant.
c. Specific tasks related to the judging process may be delegated
to VA employees or employees of a collaborating Federal agency. Third
parties may perform judging tasks subject to supervision by VA or by a
collaborating Federal agency.
d. Judges shall have the authority to disregard any minor error in
any entry that does not create any substantial benefit or detriment to
any entrant.
e. Judges shall have the authority to obtain from any entrant
additional information, clarification of information, or assistance in
resolving any technical issues relating to the installation, use,
testing or evaluation of any entry, so long as no substantial benefit
or detriment to any entrant occurs thereby.
f. Decisions of the judges are final.
10. Payment of Prizes.
a. Prior to payment of any prize, an apparent winner must execute
(at VA's option, under oath or affirmation) such documents as VA may
reasonably require, including but not limited to:
1. Declarations and certifications that relate to the apparent
winner's eligibility to participate in this contest, the absence of any
disqualifying factor, the assumption of risks and acquisition of any
insurance required by the rules,
2. The conveyance of any intellectual property required by the
rules, and
3. Any other matter that VA may reasonably require, including but
not limited to information reasonably necessary for VA to make payment
via electronic funds transfer and issue IRS Forms 1099 according to
VA's fiscal policy.
11. Procedures for obtaining additional information.
a. During the period of the contest, potential contestants or
entrants may submit questions or comments to VA using the
``Discussions'' section on the official contest Web site, https://vascheduling.challenge.gov.
b. VA may choose not to respond to any question or comment or to
delete questions or comments that it determines are not relevant to the
competition or which seek technical guidance. VA's responses on the
``Discussion'' section of the contest Web site are not official
guidance.
c. VA may also provide information and official guidance related to
this contest on the ``Updates'' section of the official contest Web
site, https://vascheduling.challenge.gov. An entrant is bound by
official guidance on the ``Updates'' section that is posted prior to
formal submission of their entry.
Signing Authority
The Secretary of Veterans Affairs, or designee, approved this
document and authorized the undersigned to sign and submit the document
to the Office of the Federal Register for publication electronically as
an official document of the Department of Veterans Affairs. John R.
Gingrich, Chief of Staff, Department of Veterans Affairs, approved this
document on October 11, 2012, for publication.
Dated: October 11, 2012.
Robert C. McFetridge,
Director, Regulation Policy and Management, Office of the General
Counsel, Department of Veterans Affairs.
Attachment A--Scheduling--Centric Functional Requirements
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Owner requirement
Business need (BN) Revised owner No. (OWNR)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BN 1: Manage National Medical 1.1 The system shall have
Scheduling Setup--The the capability to
scheduling system shall provide integrated,
provide the capability to electronic access to
configure and manage business and from other VistA
rules and standards at a applications.
national level including
establishing parameters for
role-based user access and
security and supporting a
process to monitor and
evaluate results of audit
reports.
1.2 Maintain and Modify
Scheduling
Configuration--The
system shall provide
the capability to
establish and
maintain national,
VISN, VAMC, clinic,
provider-level
configuration
standards.
Configuration shall
be enabled for
facility-level
within business
rules and
parameters.
1.2.1 The system shall have
the capability to
provide on-line
help.
1.2.2 The system shall have
the capability to
maintain an audit
trail of changes to
resource
configuration.
1.2.3 The system shall have
the capability to
create, modify, and
delete configurable
business rules that
are used in the
scheduling process.
1.2.4 The system shall
provide the
capability to
configure resources
at the National,
VISN, facility,
clinic and provider
levels.
[[Page 63430]]
1.2.5 The system shall
provide
synchronization with
individual (patient
or provider) Office
Automation calendar
for multiple types
of end user devices,
including mobile
applications
irrespective of
operating system.
1.3 Flexible Appointment
Scheduling--The
scheduling system
shall provide the
capability to
configure schedule
parameters.
1.3.1 The system shall
allow configuration
of scheduling to
accommodate
holidays.
1.3.2 The system shall
allow flexible
schedule options for
urgent care and walk-
in appointments.
1.3.3 The system shall
allow scheduling
between facilities
located in different
time zones.
1.3.4 The system shall have
the capability to
allow users to
specify timing
relationships
between activities
(e.g., coordinate
multiple activities
in specified order).
1.3.5 The system shall be
configurable to
display only
available resources.
1.3.6 The system shall have
the capability to
allow users to
define a standard
set of appointment
types with default
appointment lengths.
1.3.7 The system shall have
the capability to
search for available
appointments using
specific parameters
and to display
results for multiple
resources in a
single view.
1.4 User Access--The
system shall provide
the ability to
maintain and modify
user access.
1.4.1 The system shall
provide role-based
security for access
control and provide
improved remote
access for Veterans
to make and view
appointments over
the internet, email
and other mobile
devices.
1.4.2 The system shall have
the ability to
create, configure,
and maintain role-
based user (staff
and veteran) access
and authorization.
1.4.3 The system shall
allow configuration
and tailoring of
user access roles at
the national, VISN,
facility, clinic,
and provider levels
based on business
rules and policies.
1.4.4 The system shall have
the capability to
enforce rules
concerning what
roles can overbook
appointments for a
service or resource.
1.4.5 The system shall have
the capability to
allow, in certain
circumstances,
Veterans to schedule
appointments via
remote access
mechanisms such as
phone, internet,
email and other
mobile devices.
1.5 Resources and Groups--
The system shall
provide the
capability to
create, modify,
manage, delete, and
report on resources
and groups.
1.6 Audit Trails--The
system shall have
the capability to
display business and
technical audit
trails.
1.6.1 The system shall
provide the ability
to record data to
produce audit trails
for items including:
user access
activities,
modifications to
schedules.
1.7 Templates--The system
shall have the
capability to
create, modify,
change status, and
manage of templates
which include
notifications,
letters, and
scheduling events.
The system shall
allow the templates
to be shared and
saved.
1.7.1 The system shall
allow the templates
to be shared.
1.7.2 The system shall
allow the templates
to be saved.
1.8 The system shall
allow for the
configuration of
notifications, flags
and alerts for
scheduling process.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BN 2: Manage Veteran 2.1 The system shall have
Information--The system shall the capability to
have the ability to access provide alerts if
and manage, update and patient information
maintain accurate Veteran is missing, out of
information. Veteran special date, or requires
needs and preferences shall verification (e.g.,
be accessible and able to be eligibility, means
updated in ``real-time''. test, demographics).
2.2 The system shall have
the capability to
maintain and present
appointment
information (past
and future) within a
specified date range
(e.g., including
appointments kept,
providers,
cancellations and no-
show history).
2.3 The system shall have
the capability to
display eligibility
information
necessary for
appropriate
scheduling.
[[Page 63431]]
2.4 The system shall have
the ability to
notify/inform
schedulers of
patient preferences.
2.5 The system shall have
the capability to
receive notification
of deceased patients
and allow the
authorized user to
cancel future
appointments/
ancillary services/
orders once
notification has
been received from
an authoritative
source.
2.6 The system shall have
the capability to
establish and update
patient information
(enrollment status,
eligibility,
demographics,
preferences and
special needs, means
test status,
provider
assignments, etc.).
2.7 The system shall have
the capability to
allow patient
appointments with
multiple providers
at multiple
facilities.
2.8 The system shall
provide the ability
to identify and
verify the
identification of
the Veteran.
2.9 The system shall
support user
configuration
preferences for data
display and entry
screens within
security and
standards
constraints.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BN 3: Manage Request--Through 3.1 Variable Appointment
the use of a calendar view, Types and Lengths--
the scheduler is able to view The system shall
all providers, services, have the capability
facilities, and Veterans from to allow variable
a variety of calendar views appointment types
such as: daily, weekly, and variable
monthly with multiple appointment lengths
providers, services or [e.g., Compensation
facilities in view on a & Pension (C&P),
single screen. The scheduling Mental Health Clinic
system shall accommodate (MHC), Primary Care
appointment requests from Clinic (PCC), New,
multiple inputs sources, Follow-up, Pre-op,
including Veterans and Post-op].
providers via different
sources such as MyHeatheVet,
walk-ins, email and other
communication modes. This
forms the basis of non-
solicited demand. Solicited
demand emerges in the form of
unfulfilled appointments
based on missed opportunities
or requests outside the
scheduling appointment
horizon.
3.1.1 The scheduling system
shall display any
other scheduled or
requested
appointments for the
patient when an
appointment is
requested.
3.1.2 The system shall have
the capability to
allow users to
schedule an
appointment for a
specific, user-
defined, length of
time, based on role-
based access rules.
3.1.3 The system shall have
the capability to
establish recurring
appointments.
3.1.4 The system shall
provide the ability
to verify patient
information, display
eligibility, and
display a warning if
there is an
inconsistency
between service
requested and
eligibility.
3.2 Appointment
Selection--The
system shall have
the capability to
manage the
appointment
selection process.
3.3 Providers Per
Schedule--The system
shall have the
capability to
coordinate
appointment
scheduling based on
resource
availability.
3.4 Access Restrictions
for Scheduling
Appointments--The
system shall have
the capability to
filter available
appointments based
on patient
preferences,
appointment
availability,
geographic
considerations,
facility, date
range, resource
type, and other
special needs.
3.5 Waiting Lists--The
system shall provide
the capability to
process various
lists.
3.5.1 The system shall have
the capability to
provide a waiting
list that appears
when making or
canceling
appointments.
3.5.2 The system shall
apply configurable
business rules to
the management of a
long-term
appointment request
list.
3.5.3 The system shall have
the capability to
maintain a list of
patients that can
fill a cancelled
appointment on short
notice.
3.5.4 The system shall have
the capability to
provide users the
ability to view
available
appointments beyond
one year.
3.5.5 The system shall have
the capability to
maintain an
electronic waiting
list.
3.6 Appointment
Rescheduling--The
system shall
identify
appointments to be
rescheduled and
route them
automatically to the
reschedule status or
pending list.
3.6.1 The system shall have
the capability to
disposition
rebooking of no-
shows.
[[Page 63432]]
3.6.2 The system shall have
the capability to
link associated
appointments so that
if one is cancelled,
all linked
appointments can be
dispositioned
together.
3.6.3 The system shall be
capable of finding
and displaying
available
appointment slots
due to appointment
cancellations,
additional
resources, etc.
based upon
configuration
parameters.
3.6.4 The system shall have
the capability to
permit automatic
rebooking of
patients into
comparable
appointment slots.
3.6.5 The system shall have
the capability to
merge, purge, or
distribute scheduled
appointments from
one resource to
another.
3.7 Optimize Resource
Utilization--The
system shall
incorporate
mechanisms that
support optimization
of resources.
3.7.1 The system shall have
the capability to
capture the coded
reason for
cancellations/no-
shows, e.g., death
of patient, lack of
transportation, snow
day.
3.7.2 The system shall have
the capability to
book or cancel
recurring
appointments (e.g.,
recurring
appointments to same
resource) all at
once.
3.7.3 The system shall have
the capability to
provide users the
capability to view
available
appointments based
on configuration
parameters.
3.7.4 The system shall have
the capability to
receive notification
of expired/deceased
patients from
authoritative source
and take appropriate
action such as
cancel future
appointments/
ancillary services/
orders, etc.
3.7.5 The system shall have
the capability to
detect and notify
users if patients
have similar
appointments
(service; provider)
scheduled close
together (e.g.,
possible duplicate
or both can be seen
at one time).
3.7.6 The system shall
check availability
and status of all
resources, including
telecommunications
system availability,
for a clinical video
telehealth session.
3.8 Appointment Requests--
The system shall
have the capability
to manage
appointment
requests.
3.8.1 The system shall have
the ability to place
Veterans on an
appointment list
which is accessible
throughout the
scheduling process.
3.8.2 The system shall have
the ability to
merge, purge, or
distribute scheduled
appointments from
one resource to
another when
emergency scheduling
changes occur.
3.8.3 The system shall have
the ability to
capture attempts to
contact patient.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BN 4: Manage Appointment-- 4.1 The system shall have
Through the use of a calendar the ability to
view, the scheduler is able display co-pay
to view all providers, requirements.
services, facilities, and
Veterans from a variety of
calendar views such as:
daily, weekly, monthly with
multiple providers, services
or facilities in view on a
single screen.
4.1.1 The scheduling system
will display patient
special needs and
preferences when an
appointment is
requested and made.
4.1.2 The system should
allow configuration
to require approved
authorizations prior
to processing an
appointment request.
4.1.3 The system shall have
the capability to
create and manage
various appointment
types.
4.1.4 The system shall have
the capability to
manage scheduling
process, such as
overbooking, no-
shows, cancels, re-
schedules, etc.
4.1.5 The system shall
support the ability
to change or edit
appointments as
necessary.
4.1.6 The system shall have
the capability to
configure and
enforce business
rules at the
clinical service
level, clinic level,
provider, and
appointment type
level (e.g., females
in Obstetrics/
Gynecology clinic).
4.1.7 The system shall
provide the ability
for providers to
request
appointments.
4.2 Linking--The system
shall have the
ability to
automatically link
relevant
appointments/
resources.
[[Page 63433]]
4.2.1 The system shall have
the capability to
provide alerts when
ancillary tests/
specialty consults
have been scheduled/
missed.
4.2.2 The system shall have
the capability to
search for the
available
appointment across
multiple resources.
4.2.3 The system shall have
the capability to
provide information
to assist schedulers
to consolidate
appointments in one
day when possible
(e.g., flag the fact
that a patient is
scheduled to show up
+X days of desired
new appointment
date).
4.2.4 The system shall have
the capability to
create, re-schedule,
or cancel recurring
appointments all at
once with
appropriate desired
date.
4.2.5 The system shall have
the capability to
define individual
schedules in terms
of a single resource
or as a pre-defined
set of multiple
resources.
4.2.6 The system shall have
the capability to
create groups of
resources for
scheduling a single
event (e.g., room,
equipment, and
ancillary staff).
4.2.7 The system shall have
the capability to
cancel/restore
resources and all
linked appointments
over multiple days
(not just one day at
a time).
4.3 Assign and Configure
Time Slots--The
system shall provide
the capacity to
assign and configure
time slots for
appointments.
4.3.1 The system shall have
the capability to
block time slots in
user-defined
increments.
4.3.2 The system shall have
the capability to
present alerts and
reminders for a
variety of reasons
(e.g., eligibility
not verified, means
test or insurance
information out of
date).
4.3.3 The system should
have the capability
to support automated
coordination and
consolidation (e.g.,
onto one day) of
multiple
appointments per
patient.
4.3.4 The system shall be
capable of changing
appointment types
for an appointment
or a request at any
time (within
business
constraints).
4.3.5 The system shall have
the capability to
configure the amount
of time allowed
between appointments
for a patient with
multiple
appointments.
4.3.6 The system shall not
permit booking
appointments into
invalid time slots
based upon
configured business
rules.
4.4 System Prompt Patient
Notifications--The
system will provide
the ability to
establish and
provide appointment
notifications.
4.4.1 The system shall have
the capability to
generate a list of
future appointment
reminders.
4.4.2 The system shall have
the capability to
produce appointment
notifications in a
variety of formats
(e.g., letter,
phone, e-mail, text
messaging, pending
appointment list, or
card). Each option
shall be capable of
being enabled or
disabled based upon
patient preferences.
4.4.3 The system shall have
the capability to
filter/select
appointment
notifications based
on user defined
criteria.
4.4.4 The system shall have
the capability to
tailor appointment
notifications to
meet specific clinic
needs.
4.4.5 The system shall have
the capability to
provide configurable
notification
requests such as:
alerting staff when
to contact patients
about upcoming
appointments.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BN 5: Coordinate Associated 5.1 External Data
and Occasions of Service--The Exchange--The system
scheduling system shall shall have the
provide schedulers the capability to
ability to coordinate medical provide secure,
services throughout the VA, automated interfaces
for other agencies, with with external
private practices, and for systems for data
various delivery modes and exchange.
causes.
5.1.1 The system shall have
the ability to allow
inter-facility
scheduling,
including non-VA
facilities.
5.1.2 The system shall have
the capability to
link unscheduled
CPRS consults to the
scheduling system
for viewing.
[[Page 63434]]
5.1.3 The system shall have
the capability to
support coordinating
multiple
appointments (e.g.,
provide information
helpful in
scheduling all
appointments on one
day,
multidisciplinary
team appointments).
5.2 The system shall
provide the ability
to allow display of
primary and
associate providers
designated by
facilities.
5.2.1 Ability to schedule a
patient and resource
on both the VistA
system where the
health care resource
is located and the
VistA system where
the Veteran is
located. This
combination should
be handled across
VistA systems and
time zones as
appropriate as a
synchronized event.
5.2.2 The system shall
provide the
capability to
capture and to
select locations of
patient and
healthcare
resources, including
non-VA facilities
(e.g., Veteran home,
DoD, academic
affiliate, contract
provider, etc.).
5.2.3 The system shall
provide the ability
to create, cancel
and update Clinical
Video Telehealth
(CVT) appointment
sets (patient and
provider) as a
single event (to
prevent creation of
orphans), including
the following
resources:
CVT
Rooms.
CVT
Equipment.
Telepresenter.
5.2.4 The system shall
provide the ability
to modify a CVT
appointment pair
(patient and
provider) as needed
to prevent creation
of orphans or to
correct errors.
5.3 Ancillary Services--
The system shall
have the capability
to accommodate
different service
types such as C&P,
ancillary services
and specialty
services.
5.3.1 The system shall have
the capability to
link ancillary tests
to appointments (if
they are changed,
ancillary tests can
be updated without
canceling order and
re-ordering).
5.3.2 The system shall have
the capability to
link ancillary tests
to appointments.
5.3.3 The system shall
provide the
capability to
establish links to
activities that
require coordination
with appointments
(e.g., ancillary
services).
5.3.4 The system shall have
the capability to
coordinate
appointments with
related ancillary
services.
5.4 The system shall have
the capability to
provide a patient
preference field
that informs clerks
to special
transportation
concerns or other
issues that limit
availability (e.g.,
specific days and
times).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BN 6: Manage Encounter of 6.1 The system shall have
Care--The system will have the capability to
the capability to provide check-in,
differentiate between check-out,
encounter data and cancellation
appointment data. The reasons, and no-show
encounter data is not tracked data.
by the scheduler, but by
providers in the electronic
health record.
6.2 The system shall have
the capability to
provide facility-
wide visibility for
a patient (i.e.
checked-in or out,
in treatment room
etc.).
6.3 The system shall
provide statistics
for appointments
such as: no-shows,
left without being
seen, etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BN 7: Reporting--The system 7.1 General Reporting
should have the capability to Needs
produce, display and format
reports, and should be able
to be saved in various
formats such as PDF, CSV,
etc. Reports containing
personally identifiable
information that are required
to be transmitted, retrieved,
viewed, or printed meet all
VA Handbook 6500
requirements. These reports
represent the as-is process.
It is expected that report
requirements will be further
defined with the business
owners throughout the system
development and acquisition
process.
7.1.1 Ad Hoc Reports--The
system shall have
the capability to
support user-created
ad hoc report
generation (without
re-programming) and
provide the
capability to save
the report
definition for
future use and to
save the reports in
various standard
exportable formats.
[[Page 63435]]
7.1.2 The system shall have
the capability to
report on scheduling
measures and metrics
across the VHA at
many levels,
including but not
limited to National,
VISN, Facility/
Station/Clinic/
Community-Based
Outpatient Clinic
(CBOC), and shall
have the capability
to ``roll-up'' data
from the most
granular level (i.e.
clinic or station
level) to the
highest level for
reporting purposes
(i.e. National
level) as defined by
the business.
7.1.3 The system shall have
the capability to
establish and ensure
the use of
consistent metrics
and measures across
different areas of
the VHA; i.e.,
ensure that all
business level
facilities measure,
capture and report
the same data in the
same ways.
7.2 Operational reports
are generated by a
facility, VISN,
station or clinic to
facilitate day-to-
day operations.
These can range from
printing daily
appointment lists
for a clinic to
printing a listing
of patients who
missed appointments
or who left without
being seen.
Operational reports
are also generated
to track performance
metrics, access to
care metrics,
utilization of
staff, workload
measurement/workload
leveling and
workload planning.
7.2.1 The system shall have
the capability to
generate and display
a work list based on
unfulfilled
appointments at the
operational level to
capture the source
of a request, type
of request, and
status of a request
along a timeline.
Work list (queue) is
automatically
updated based on
tasks that need to
be completed by the
scheduler.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attachment B--Scheduling-Related and VA-Specific Requirements and Point
Allocations
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Requirement Description Points
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.............................. The system shall have the 3
capability to provide for the
enforcement and modification
of national-level data
standards including procedure
and diagnosis codes as
currently defined in VistA.
2.............................. Flexible Schedule Component 5
Organization--The solution
shall have a mechanism to
oversee and manage potential
impacts to the system as a
result of policies,
directives, etc.
3.............................. The system shall provide the 5
flexibility to accommodate
new functional requirements
based on business needs
(e.g., primary care home
(PACT) based care
appointments, telehealth,
etc.).
4.............................. The system shall have the 3
capability to alert VA staff
when appointments are
scheduled about patient
scheduling reliability (show/
no-show rate) averaged over a
period of time configured by
the authorized end user.
5.1............................ The system will, when managing 5
the appointment selection
process, shall have the
capability to capture the
desired date for the
appointment.
5.2............................ The system shall allow for 1
administrative closure of
consults.
5.3............................ The system shall have the 2
ability to integrate
unscheduled CPRS consults
with the scheduling system.
6.............................. The system shall associate 5
each appointment type with
the correct DSS stop code/
credit stop; see: https://www1.va.gov/vhapublications/ViewPublication.asp?pub_ID=1788 788.
7.1............................ Telehealth--The scheduling 5
system shall provide the
capability for national
Clinical Video Telehealth
(CVT) scheduling which
ensures resources at multiple
ends of a telehealth visit
are coordinated with the
patient across different
VistA systems and capture
workload data.
7.2............................ The system shall have the 3
ability to capture whether
appointment is scheduled vs.
unscheduled to support travel
reimbursement determination.
7.3............................ The system shall provide 5
reports for consults obtained
outside of VHA.
8.............................. The system shall have the 3
ability to disposition for
travel reimbursement.
9.1............................ The system shall have the 3
capability to generate
reports containing scheduling
data from both the solution
application and legacy
systems.
9.2............................ The system will collect 5
currently used wait time
metrics including create date
and desired date, scheduled
appointment date and
completed appointment date.
9.3............................ National Reports: National .......
reporting is generated by
national program managers,
VISN management and by
facility management to review
performance, trends,
analytics, as well as access
to care and payment issues.
National reports are
populated by ``rolling up''
information from the various
stations, clinics, and
facilities across VHA.
9.3.1.......................... The system shall have the 3
ability to capture and
provide the data necessary to
conduct capacity planning
through complete visibility
into supply (provider,
equipment, facility, support
staff) and demand (enrolled
and/or empaneled Veteran
requests for appointments).
9.3.2.......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate wait
time metrics and measures
based on clinic operational
metrics.
9.3.3.......................... The system shall have the
capability to generate
reports based on cost
reporting metrics and
measures (i.e. DSS stop codes
and other financial metrics
and measures as defined by
the business) that are tied
to the scheduling
appointment. Examples of
existing reports include, but
are not limited to the
following:.
DSS Outpatient 3
Encounter and Workload.
9.3.4.......................... The system shall have the 3
capability to generate
reports based on provider
utilization and provider
credentialing.
[[Page 63436]]
9.3.5.......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate
performance reports.
Performance measures include
access measures, clinical
measures and scheduling
measures.
9.3.6 The system shall have the 3
capability to generate
patient complaint tracking
and status metrics and
measures reports. Examples of
existing reports which work
now and must continue to work
include (but are not limited
to) the following types of
reports:
Survey of
Healthcare Experiences of
Patients (SHEP) Inpatient
and Outpatient Survey
Reports.
Patient Advocate
Profiles.
Number of
Complaint Issues by Type
of Care Patient Advocate
Tracking System (PATS).
Summary of
Responses to Patient
Complaint Data in
Outpatient SHEP (OQP).
Compliments/
Complaints as % of Total
(PATS) Report.
All Complaint
Issue Trending (PATS).
Complaint Clinical
Appeal Data (PATS).
9.3.7.......................... The system shall have the 4
capability to generate
reports based on metrics and
measures related to Clinic
Resources as defined by the
business.
9.3.8.......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate on-
demand reports containing
current data to be presented
to Congress.
9.3.9.......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate
reports based on metrics and
measures related to Mental
Health appointments.
9.3.10......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate
reports based on Workload and
Utilization Management
metrics.
9.3.11......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate
reports based on unfulfilled
appointment request.
9.4.1.......................... The system shall have the 3
capability to generate
reports based on metrics and
measures related to Workload
management at the local level.
9.4.2.......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate
reports based on metrics and
measures related to patient
information relevant to
supporting the episode of
care, the continuity of care,
and missed opportunities of
all patients.
9.4.3.......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate
reports based on metrics and
measures related to
appointments and clinics,
including availability and
utilization, case load,
cancellations, check-ins,
general/random appointment
information, notifications
and letters, and audits by
supervisors.
9.4.4.......................... The system shall have the 5
capability to generate QA
reports to ensure the proper
disposition of incomplete
appointment information.
Examples of current reports
that rely upon this data and
must be maintained include,
but are not limited to, the
following:
Encounter Activity
Report.
Encounter `Action
Required' Report.
Means Test/
Eligibility/Enrollment
Report.
Outpatient
Encounter Workload
Statistics.
Performance
Monitor Summary Report.
Performance
Monitor Detailed Report.
Trend of Facility
Uniques by 12 Month Date
Ranges.
Error Listing.....
Transmission
History Report--Full.
Transmission
History for Patient.
Scheduling/PCE Bad
Pointer Count.
Alpha List of
Incomplete Encounters.
Incomplete
Encounter Error Report.
Summary Report--
IEMM.
Correct Incomplete
Encounters.
Provider/Diagnosis
Report.
Visit Report by
Transmitted OPT Encounter.
9.4.5.......................... The system shall have the 3
capability to generate
reports based on metrics and
measures related to
diagnostic and procedural
information that ranks each
by frequency and for a
specific date range. Examples
of current reports that must
be maintained include, but
are not limited to, the
following:
Outpatient Diagnosis/
Procedure Frequency Report
Management Report for
Ambulatory Procedures
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attachment C--Non-Functional Requirements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NFR characteristic NFR sub-characteristic NFR Statement
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1 Functionality....................... ........................... 3.1.1.8 The Scheduling Solution shall be
capable of providing configurable error
messages, work flows, and alerts.
3.1.2 Accuracy............. 3.1.1.11 The Scheduling Solution shall
display appointment time with
appropriate time zones.
3.1.3 Interoperability.... 3.1.3.2 The Scheduling Solution shall
support content transportation standards
and implementation specifications set
forth in 45 CFR 170.205.
3.1.3.5 The Scheduling Solution shall be
capable of navigating seamlessly among
related modules throughout the end-to-
end scheduling process.
3.1.5 Security............. 3.1.5.1 The Scheduling Solution shall be
able to support secure messaging.
[[Page 63437]]
3.3 Usability........................... 3.3.1 Understandability.... 3.3.1.1 The Scheduling Solution shall be
self-descriptive and explain itself
through cues (e.g., screen, area, and
group titles indicating the purpose of
the respective interface element; on-
screen instructions/diagrams;
explanations/answers that are available
on request; no implicit assumptions
about how users are expected to behave
that would contradict users'
expectations; and feedback is given on
user actions, system actions, and the
system state.
3.3.3.2 The Scheduling Solution shall be
usable across multiple operating
systems, browsers, and platforms.
3.5 Maintainability..................... 3.5.1 Analyzability........ 3.5.1.1 The Scheduling Solution shall be
capable of providing transaction logs,
error logs and audit trails for
pertinent scheduling transactions.
3.5.4 Testability.......... 3.5.4.1 The Scheduling Solution shall
provide criteria to enable the
measurement to test pieces of code or
functionality, or a provision added in
software so that test plans and scripts
can be executed systematically.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[FR Doc. 2012-25408 Filed 10-15-12; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 8320-01-P
