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The Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Network Contracting Office 20 (NCO 20) is conducting a market survey and is seeking potential sources for an Electronic Resources for the Library. This Sources Sought Notice is issued for information and planning purposes only. This is not a solicitation or a request for proposal and shall not be construed as an obligation or commitment by the Government. An award will not be made on any offers submitted in response to this notice, and it shall not be implied the Government is committed to providing any solicitation or award following this notice. The Government will not pay for any information received in response to this request, nor will the Government compensate a respondent for any costs incurred in developing the information provided. Â
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Responses shall be submitted to Nazanin Kreiner at Nazanin.Kreiner@va.gov by COB 01/16/2023 (4:30pm Mountain Standard Time). SUBJECT: RFI 36C26023Q0175 Electronic Resources for the Library.

This notice is intended strictly for market research. The purpose of this Sources Sought Notice is to determine interest and capability of potential qualified sources of supply and determine the socioeconomic size classification of the supplier and manufacturer of the end item.Â
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Interested companies shall provide, at a minimum, the following information with their response;Â Â
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Company Name and Address:Â
Point of Contact (POC)Â
Name:Â
Email Address:Â
Phone Number:Â
DUNS Number/UNIQUE SAM ID:Â
Brochures of their offered equipment.
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The anticipated North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 513120 Electronic Resources for the Library. Mark if your firm is eligible for participation in one of the following small business programs. If so, please indicate the program: Â
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[ ]Â yes [ ] no - Small Business (SB)Â Â Â
[ ] yes [ ] no - HUBZone  Â
[ ]Â yes [ ] no - Small Business 8(a)Â Â Â
[ ]Â yes [ ] no - Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB)Â Â Â
[ ] yes [ ] no - Women-Owned (WO) Small Business Â
[ ]Â yes [ ] no - Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB)Â Â
[ ]Â yes [ ] no - Veteran Owned Small Business (VOSB)Â
[ ] yes [ ] no - Large Business  Â
[ ]Â yes [ ] no - Other (please specify)Â Â Â
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Please answer the following questions:Â
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[Â ]Â yes [Â ] no - Does not exceed 1,000 employees; (for NAICSÂ 513120) must be verifiable thru the System for Award Management)Â
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[Â ]Â yes [Â ] no Is primarily engaged in the retail or wholesale trade and normally sells the type of item being supplied;Â Â
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[ ] yes [ ] no Takes ownership or possession of the item(s) with its personnel, equipment or facilities in a manner consistent with industry practice (identify how this occurs); and Â
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[Â ]Â yes [Â ] no Will supply the end item of a small business manufacturer, processor or producer made in the United States, or obtains a waiver of such requirement pursuant to paragraph (b)(5) CFR 121.406.Â
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Note: Do not include Proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information in responses.Â
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In addition to providing the information requested above, responding companies are encouraged to include any relevant information (specifications, cut sheets, brochures, capability statement, past experience etc.) to confirm the company s ability to meet the requirements outlined in this request. Â
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Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the U.S. Government to form a binding contract or agreement. This notice shall not be construed as a commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation, or ultimately award a contract, nor does it restrict the Government to a particular acquisition approach. The Government will in no way be bound to this information if any solicitation is issued.Â
Requested Salient Characteristics
You may provide a benchmark quote and/or a Statement of Work (SOW) with salient characteristics in addition to this questionnaire.

A brief description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency's needs (including the installation location, equipment, clinical need addressed, and estimated value):
The VA Portland Health Care System Medical Library obtains subscriptions to the following electronic resources, to support high quality clinical care, and support evidence-based clinical practice:
Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED)
DynaMed
LGBTQ+ Source Database
CINAHL Ultimate Database
eBook Package Clinical Books
eBook Package Nursing Books
eBook Package Psychology Books
No equipment is required. All resources are access via an internet connection, and confirmation of access is provided through IP validation.

Salient Characteristics:
The electronic resources must be hosted by a third party or the vendor, and be accessible via internet connection, with IP validation that the individual requesting access is from the VA Portland Health Care System.
Bibliographic resource designed for physicians, therapists, medical researchers, historians, and other clinicians to obtain information about alternative and allied therapies and related subjects. This bibliographic resource should contain the full text for at least some of the citations, and provide the capability for individuals to set up a personal account within the resource to keep track of those citations that they may find useful. The resource must provide the capability of generating citation information and downloading citations for subsequent use in bibliographic management tools such as RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley.

The point-of-care tool subscription must provide clinicians with evidence-based information about a wide variety of diagnoses, including drug interactions, drug calculators, the option to obtain continuing medical education credits when a clinician establishes a personal account, and the option to access the point-of-care tool through a mobile app at any time with the creation of a personal account.

The bibliographic resource on issues related to LGBTQ+ publications should be a bibliographic and full text database covering scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications, and a specialized thesaurus with thousands of terms. It provides access to 178 full text journals, and indexes and abstracts information from an additional 304 journals. This resource is important to VAPORHCS in order to provide high-quality, evidence-based care to our lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer Veterans.

The ebook packages need to provide access to ebooks via IP validation to VAPORHCS staff. At least 4,000 books need to be focused on clinical topics, such as adult gerontology practice guidelines, and the Washington Manual of Surgery. A further 770 ebooks should focus on supporting nursing practice, and 650+ ebooks should focus on mental health resources that support psychology practice.

STATEMENT OF WORK (SOW)
Electronic Resource Subscriptions

BACKGROUND
The VAPORHCS Medical Library subscribes to a number of electronic resources to help support high quality, evidence-based patient care. These resources include databases such as point-of-care tools and searchable citation databases to identify literature on a variety of specialty topics, and packages of eBooks that are available to all VAPORHCS staff. While many databases and ebook packages are available through subscriptions managed by the Library Network Office (LNO) at a national, the additional resources identified in this document for VAPORHCS fills the gap in a number of patient care areas. This contract is a vehicle to purchase specific online resources as a single package, rather than multiple small purchases throughout the fiscal year.

SCOPE OF WORK
The contractor shall be responsible for the management, labor and equipment necessary to provide subscriptions for specifically identified online resources for VA Portland Health Care System. All of these resources have been previously purchased as individual purchase card purchases in the past, and are thus renewals of existing electronic resources already used by VAPORHCS staff. The electronic resources are:

The Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) a bibliographic database designed for physicians, therapists, medical researchers, historians, and other clinicians to obtain information about alternative and allied therapies and related subjects.
DynaMed a point-of-care tool providing clinicians with evidence-based information about a wide variety of diagnoses, including drug interactions, drug calculators, the option to obtain continuing medical education credits when a clinician establishes a personal account, and the option to access DynaMed through a mobile app.
eBook package Clinical Books provides all VAPORHCS staff access to approximately 4,000 e-books focused on clinical topics, such as adult gerontology practice guidelines, and the Washington Manual of Surgery. Access is available to unlimited users from VAPORHCS with the subscription to this package.
eBook package Nursing Books provides all VAPORHCS staff access to approximately 770 ebooks focused on supporting nursing practice, and updated on a quarterly basis. Topics covered by the books in the package cover evidence-based nursing, leadership, nursing management, pharmacology, and home care nursing.
eBook package Psychology Resources provides all VAPORHCS staff access to approximately 670 ebooks to help guide and support the work of the Mental Health staff.
LGBTQ+ Source Database a bibliographic and full text database covering scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications, and a specialized thesaurus with thousands of terms. It provides access to 178 full text journals, and indexes and abstracts information from an additional 304 journals. This resource is important to VAPORHCS in order to provide high-quality, evidence-based care to our lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer Veterans.
CINAHL Ultimate a bibliographic database that focuses on nursing and allied health literature, this is a critical tool in supporting evidence-based practice for nurses. Upgrading from CINAHL Plus (provided by the Library Network Office subscription) to CINAHL Ultimate gives the VAPORHCS access to citations from an additional 1,700 journals over the CINAHL Plus subscription, which should reduce the number of interlibrary loan requests made by the VAPORHCS library, and full text will be provided more efficiently to nurses and allied health staff.

The Government anticipates award of a Firm Fixed-Price contract (One Base Year plus four (4) Option Years) for the above electronic resources.

Contractor shall coordinate with each facility s Point of Contact any activity related to this contract.

SPECIFIC TASKS
Vendor must provide access to the electronic resources listed above for all employees of the VA Portland Health Care System using an VA computer that falls into a specific public IP range (i.e., access is IP-validated). The listed electronic resources will be made available to unlimited users from the VAPORHCS, who may access it onsite or through remote access methods such as a personal LibLynx account. In addition, when applicable, mobile applications for the electronic resources will be made available to all VAPORHCS employees.

PERFORMANCE PERIOD
The period of performance shall be:
One-base year from 6/1/2023-5/31/2024
Option Year 1 6/1/2024-5/31/2025
Option Year 2 6/1/2025-5/31/2026
Option Year 3 6/1/2026-5/31/2027
Option Year 4 6/1/2027-5/31/2028

PERFORMANCE MONITORING
The librarian at the VA Portland Health Care System will monitor access to the electronic resources covered by this contract. In addition, any VAPORHCS employee is welcome to contact the librarian to let her know that they are unable to access the database, and such notifications will be tracked by the librarian. The librarian will track resolutions to such complaints to document vendor s efforts in making the database accessible per the contract.
SECURITY REQUIREMENTS
The contractor employees shall not have access to VA sensitive or computer information and will not require routine access to VA Facilities. The contractor employees shall require intermittent access only and will be escorted by VA employees while at VA Facilities. No background investigation is required.

GOVERNMENT-FURNISHED EQUIPMENT (GFE)/GOVERNMENT-FURNISHED INFORMATION (GFI).
No government-furnished equipment or information will be part of this contract.

OTHER PERTINENT INFORMATION OR SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS.
None

RISK CONTROL
This contract does not contain any real risk. Access to the database is provided via the internet and validated via the VA public IP addresses, and does not involve any protected health information, nor does it involve any information about the VA.

PLACE OF PERFORMANCE
VA Portland Health Care System employees will access the database provided under this contract either on-site, with an Athens account, or through a mobile application to VAPORHCS employees.

TASKS AND DELIVERABLES
Contractors shall provide all Tasks and Deliverables described to:
VA Portland Health Care System
3710 SW U.S. Veterans Hospital Road
Portland, OR 97239

Included in the VA Portland Health Care System are all community-based outpatient clinics associated with the VA Portland, as well as the VA Portland campus in Vancouver, WA.

The Contractor will not need to come onsite to provide services. Instead, they will be delivered electronically via access validated by IP addresses.

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