Defense Health Agency contract draws four protestors

A contract award to survey military health patients has drawn fire from four bidders unhappy that they picked to do the work.

The Joint Outpatient Experience Survey or JOES contract was won by Ipsos Public Affairs and is worth $36.7 million.

Ipsos is to conduct a pair of surveys for the Defense Health Agency of patients receiving outpatient care at military health facilities and through Tricare.

Ipsos bested Deloitte Consulting, Altarum Institute, Gallup Inc. and Press Ganey Associates in the competition.

The four losing bidders have filed protests with the Government Accountability Office challenging the Defense Health Agency’s evaluation of their bids. The contract was awarded through the MOBIS contract.

According to the RFI, DHA wants two surveys. The first is a 25-question multi-mode survey to be fielded daily to a sample of Military Health Service beneficiaries who recently received outpatient care at a MHS facility.

DHS expects annual survey volume of 5 million and a response rate of 30 percent.

The second survey will be 50 questions and they expect a sample of 575,000. They also want a 30 percent response to this survey.

The contractor will draw patient samples, design survey tools, produce surveys, field the surveys, retrieve and collect the data, analyze results and products reports of the findings.

The surveys will be multi-mode so they will include paper and online questionnaires. The company will also operate a 24/7 call center.

The protests were filed between July 10 and 13 and a decision from GAO is expected between Oct. 19 and 21.