Special Notice / Hearing: None__
Vote Required: Majority
To: Honorable Board of Supervisors
From: Louise F. Rogers, Chief, San Mateo County Health
Marc Meulman, Director, Public Health Policy and Planning
Subject: Agreement with Qualtrics, LLC for the Continued Engineering, Storing and Maintenance of a Public Health Reporting System
RECOMMENDATION:
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Adopt a resolution authorizing an agreement with Qualtrics, LLC for the engineering, storing and maintenance of a public health reporting system for the term of July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022, in an amount not to exceed $298,700.
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BACKGROUND:
On March 3, 2020, the County’s Health Officer issued a “Declaration of Local Health Emergency Regarding Novel Coronavirus 2019,” and the County Manager, as the County’s Director of Emergency Services, issued a proclamation of local emergency pursuant to Government Code section 8630 and Chapter 2.46 of the County’s Ordinance Code, which proclamation was ratified by the Board of Supervisors on March 10, 2020, pursuant to Government Code section 8630, and extended by the Board on April 7, 2020, until such time as the local emergency is terminated.
On March 24, 2020, the Board approved Resolution No. 077305 which, pursuant to Government Code Section 25502.7, authorized the Director to execute agreements for goods and services up to and including $500,000.
Subsequently, in collaboration with the Procurement Department and the Emergency Operations Center, Public Health, Policy and Planning (PHPP) implemented three individual purchase orders for specific Qualtrics, LLC (Qualtrics) modules to help with case investigation, a public health lab portal, and integration of lab data. Contact tracing is a core strategy of PHPP’s Communicable Disease Control (CD) program infrastructure in responding to and controlling the spread of COVID-19. This public health reporting system integrates reports of positive COVID-19 lab results faster, for more efficient data tracking and response; this shortened the turn-around time for contact tracing responses and helped reduce the spread of COVID-19. This reporting system was pursued due to long delays in receiving lab results from the State’s reportable disease system. This public health reporting system also creates dashboards for precise reporting and integrates San Mateo County’s data with the State digital COVID-19 contact tracing tool CalCONNECT, which is required for ongoing local and State CD management.
On June 30, 2021, PHPP entered into a formal agreement with Qualtrics to maintain the public health modules critical to San Mateo County’s COVID response.
DISCUSSION:
This agreement provides continued engineering, storing and maintenance of Qualtric’s public health reporting system through June 2022. This agreement will allow PHPP to preserve the data integrity and efficiencies that Qualtrics’ public health reporting system has created.
Additionally, after creating and customizing the Qualtrics’ modules in the second half of 2020, COVID-19 lab specimens otherwise not received - due to the State’s reporting system - started integrating in Spring 2021. This enabled PHPP’s Epidemiology team to accurately provide required reporting to internal, external, and State stakeholders. Although the platform does not process all lab specimens, it automates the process for those data wherein the typical process does not work.
PHPP is requesting a waiver of the Request for Proposals requirement for this agreement with Qualtrics to maintain the existing relationship and software development created at the beginning of the COVID-19 emergency.
The agreement and resolution have been reviewed and approved by County Counsel as to form.
ISD has reviewed and approved the IT component of this agreement.
Although this is continuing work, given that this is the first contract with the vendor, this contract is late to the Board because of required technical contracting documentation procedures with the vendor and with needed internal IT security review processes that required additional time and input.
The resolution contains the County’s standard provisions allowing further amendment of the County fiscal obligations by a maximum of $25,000 (in aggregate).
It is anticipated that the Qualtrics platform will help PHPP record and analyze 100% of the COVID-19 lab results from the San Mateo County Public Health Lab in FY 2021-22. Data obtained through the Qualtrics platform also include whole genome sequencing (variant) data, which helps the Epidemiology team to quickly integrate these results with other epidemiological data to identify COVID-19 clusters and outbreaks in San Mateo County.
PERFORMANCE MEASURE:
|
Measure |
FY 2020-21 Actual |
FY 2021-22 Estimated |
|
Percentage of COVID-19 lab results recorded and analyzed |
100% |
100% |
FISCAL IMPACT:
The term of the agreement is July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022. The amount of the agreement is not to exceed $298,700 for the one-year term. The contract is funded through the Epidemiology, Laboratory Capacity Expanded grant. Funds in the amount of $298,700 are included in the PHPP FY 2021-22 Adopted Budget. There is no Net County Cost associated with the approval of this contract.