Octo Consulting Group has been awarded a $10 million blanket purchase agreement to maintain and enhance the Health and Human Services Department’s quality and safety review system.
The 5-year BPA will support HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which is charged with improving America’s health care system by developing the knowledge, tools and data needed to help health care professionals, policymakers and patients make informed health decisions. The agency’s Quality and Safety Review System provides national data on patient safety and adverse events, using a software tool that local hospitals and health systems can use to better understand and prevent adverse health events, such as post-surgery complications and medical conditions acquired while hospitalized.
The BPA is Octo’s first contract with AHRQ, although Octo has worked with HHS on several projects over the past 10 years, including a recent $20 million BPA to help the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services continue its efforts to pursue agile methodologies. For the QSRS BPA, Octo has partnered with IMPAQ International LLC, which previously served as a subcontractor supporting development of system.
Octo Executive Vice President Jay Shah said hospitals, patients and health organizations are constantly producing massive amounts of data that could be better leveraged for informed health care decisions.
“The QSRS platform is crucial to improving our nation’s health care system by providing hospitals with a tool to help them identify and mitigate adverse events such as post-surgery hospital infections,” Shah said. “We’re honored that AHRQ believes in our agile approaches and has entrusted the care, maintenance and improvement of the QSRS platform to us. We’re excited to work with AHRQ to improve the safety and quality of health care across the country.”
AHRQ is currently assessing the accuracy, efficiency and usability of QSRS, in a pilot program with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Clinical Data Abstraction Center, Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, and MedStar Health’s National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare. Octo will work to enhance the system while maintaining QSRS during pilot testing, using its expertise in agile development and cloud solutions, the company said.
Related: Octo Consulting Wins $20M Contract to Continue CMS Agile Transformation