DES MOINES, Iowa — Monday, the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) announced they are looking for vendors to assist in providing COVID-19 emergency contact tracing and case investigation services for the state.
"Due to the exponential increase in case volume, the state needs additional resources, which require an emergency procurement to assist with COVID-19 contact tracing and case investigation," says the release from the IDPH.
The state says they have about 138 team members that conduct contact tracing for 63 of Iowa's 99 counties.
The state expedited the Request for Proposal (RFP) process to procure the emergency contract with an anticipated start date within seven days after the announcement of the award.
Here's what the scope of the work looks like:
- Establish a team of staff to support contact tracing and case investigation.
- Provide supervision for the team assigned to investigate COVID-19 cases and conduct contact tracing.
- With guidance from the Department, conduct team training on contact tracing and case investigation.
- Ensure team coverage seven days a week between the hours of 9:00AM and 8:30PM.
- Monitor team performance to ensure each team members’ work is of high quality and data entry of investigation and tracing information is accurate, timely, and logical.
- Provide ongoing technical assistance for team members by ensuring access to a supervisor with expert knowledge of the Department’s guidance during all operational hours, holding daily team meetings, and reviewing a selection of each team member’s case investigations, including contact tracing on a regular basis to ensure compliance with the Department’s guidance.
- Provide a daily progress report to the Department including daily summaries of the number of cases investigated and contacts traced.
- Comply with all relevant privacy and confidentiality laws and provide all necessary security and confidentiality paperwork necessary for access to state designated systems.
- Team members will use the state designated technology to assign and investigate cases and contacts.
- Team members will follow the Department’s guidance and relevant state laws and conduct empathetic, confidential, and timely case investigations and close contact notifications.
- Team members should on average complete three case investigations or six contact notifications per hour.
- Provide reports and data as designated by the Centers for Disease Control in the ELC Performance Measures Guidance for Project E: Enhancing Detection. The Department requires periodic reporting of compliance with provision of services and incurred expenses by resulting contractors. Anticipated reports include, but are not limited to: reports and data related to cases investigated and contacts traced. The reports and submission requirements are subject to change at the sole discretion of the Department.
Proposals from interested vendors were due Tuesday night.
The department tweeted Monday that they are also looking to hire case investigators and contact tracers.
More information on those positions can be found by clicking/tapping this link.
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