Indian Health Service Announces Solicitation for Leadership, Long-Term Coaching, Mentoring Services for IHS Rosebud Hospital

Hospital management contracting opportunity open to tribally owned business

The Indian Health Service (IHS) announced a contracting opportunity to provide executive leadership at the IHS Rosebud Hospital in Rosebud, South Dakota, eventually transitioning to a coaching and mentoring role as top level administrative positions are filled with permanent employees. This effort to improve hospital management is one of the key requirements of the Systems Improvement Agreement between IHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services designed to improve services at the hospital to fully meet safety and quality of care standards.

The opportunity is being announced as a sole source solicitation, under provisions of the Small Business Act related to tribally owned businesses, to Rosebud Electronic Integration Corporation, a company owned by the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

“This announcement demonstrates the IHS commitment to innovation in working with tribes to provide access to quality health care for patients,” said IHS Principal Deputy Director Mary L. Smith. “This unique contract will provide expert short-term leadership while helping us build capacity and train permanent leaders to ensure sustainable improvement. IHS is taking decisive action to improve our ability to deliver quality health care in the Great Plains Area and across the IHS system. Investing in our staff and developing effective leaders is part of our overall quality improvement strategy.”

Phase II of the Systems Improvement Agreement calls for the services of an experienced and qualified hospital management firm to provide a team of coaches and consultants to work on-site with hospital executive leaders, which include chief executive officer, chief operations officer, chief nurse officer, chief medical officer and chief quality management officer.

IHS is working to ensure that the hospital has strong permanent leadership in order to provide quality health care to patients. This arrangement is intended to fill these positions with experienced and qualified personal services contractors until such a time that individuals are hired to permanently fill these roles, and once permanent federal employees begin working in these management positions, the personal services contractors will transition to the roles of coaches/consultants for the permanent federal employees.

This follows the October announcement of a Request for Proposal for coaching and mentoring at IHS Pine Ridge Hospital in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Throughout this year, IHS has been collaborating with tribal leaders and local health partners on a series of actions to aggressively confront some of the long-standing health care service challenges in the Great Plains Area, pursuing solutions that will bring sustainable improvements in quality of care at regional hospitals and facilities, like IHS Pine Ridge Hospital, and those across the IHS system:

IHS announced a new Quality Framework outlining how IHS will develop, implement and sustain an effective quality program that improves patient experience and outcomes, strengthens organizational capacity, and ensures the delivery of reliable, high quality health care at IHS federal-government-operated, direct service facilities.
IHS awarded a one-year contract to The Joint Commission for accreditation, training and education services to strengthen quality and patient safety
IHS expanded efforts to ensure medical equipment used at IHS facilities is up to date, properly maintained, and reliable, through the establishment of a new policy on the minimum standards for medical equipment management, purchase, maintenance, and replacement.
IHS announced a $6.8 million contract to Avera Health to expand telehealth in the Great Plains Area. This initiative is intended to bring tele-video ED and specialty services to the Great Plains Area IHS facilities, including emergency medical services.
CMS awarded a new contract to help support best health care practices and other operational improvements for IHS federal government operated hospitals that participate in the Medicare program.
CMS included IHS hospitals in a nationwide Hospital Improvement and Innovation Networks (HIINs) contract for public and private sector hospitals to reduce adverse events by 20 percent and hospital readmissions by 12 percent.
IHS hired a new Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the Great Plains Area, to serve as the lead regional experts on IHS medical and public health services, providing technical leadership and guidance to facility chief medical officers and clinical staff in the region.

The IHS, an agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides a comprehensive health service delivery system for approximately 2.2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. For more information, visit http://www.ihs.gov. Follow IHS on Facebook .