July 25, 2018: Below is the archived procurement approach that was developed for the Oregon Common Credentialing Program prior to its July 25, 2018 suspension.
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has finalized a procurement approach for Common Credentialing to ensure the most appropriate alignment with related system needs under the state’s strategic framework for health information technology and health information exchange. OHA is also interested in minimizing complexity and duplication for potential users of state systems and sharing benefits across the state’s health care programs.
OHA received approval from the Department of Administrative Service, OHA’s Office for Contracts and Procurement, OHA’s Health Information Technology Executive Steering Committee, a group comprised of OHA leadership, and the Department of Justice to first procure a prime vendor to lead and manage the selection and procurement process for three interrelated solutions. Important functions of a prime vendor include:
- Serving as a vendor partner who is the single point of contact overseeing and coordinating the implementation of related systems
- Procuring and managing vendor solutions in a manner that allows for stakeholder appraisal and meets the state’s requirements ensuring a transparent and open process
- Establishing required integration between vendor solutions
- Providing an appropriate common access mechanism to ensure an efficient user experience
- Reporting on solution development and ongoing operations on a regular basis
- Providing consistency in the delivery of services across the portfolio of common projects
- Allowing OHA to ensure the most appropriate management of multiple vendors’ solutions and reduce the agency’s risk of failure
OHA has contracted with a prime vendor and systems integrator, Harris Corporation, for the following projects: Common Credentialing, Provider Directory services, and Clinical Quality Metrics Registry.
The prime vendor is leading a subcontractor selection and procurement process for the Common Credentialing solution. This will be a competitive selection process, whereby OHA and agency stakeholders will approve the method by which common credentialing vendors will be evaluated. OHA will review and accept (or decline) the Prime vendor's selection. This approach will utilize all work done thus far on the project, including the requirements. The Prime vendor will negotiate with the selected solution vendor and administer and manage the subcontracts for the procurement and subsequent implementation.
The contract with a credentialing vendor is projected for mid-2016. Under the current development plan a credentialing solution would be in place in 2017 after a 6-12 month implementation. Given that Provider Directory and CQMR are leveraging federal funds, OHA has also obtained conditional approval from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to contract with a prime vendor. Formal approval will not be given until contract negotiation with the prime vendor and the Quality Assurance review of the contract have been completed.
Updated May 2016