By Debbie Gregory.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), in an attempt to improve the disability examination experience for veterans, has awarded twelve major contracts to improve the deliverability of timely disability benefits claims decisions.

The contracts, worth $6.8 billion, are being awarded for a period of 12 months with four 12-month options.

The VA awarded the contracts to VetFed Resources, Veterans Evaluation Services and QTC Medical Services through the Medical Disability Examination Program in support of the MyVA initiative.

“The goal will be to reduce the veteran’s wait times for examinations as much as possible thereby providing faster claims decisions and enhancing veterans’ experience in a positive way,” said Tom Murphy, acting principal deputy undersecretary for benefits at the VA.

The Medical Disability Examination Program will see the consolidation of the contracts under a single program management initiative, with representation in the central management group from both the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

“This will be a major accomplishment for veterans going forward, not only for the efficiencies and additional oversight, but VA can now maximize the capacity of inherent capability and leverage the contract expertise and capacity as needed,” said Murphy. “The goal will be to reduce the veteran’s wait times for examinations as much as possible thereby providing faster claims decisions and enhancing Veterans’ experience in a positive way.”

Up until now, contracts for medical examinations have been managed by both administrations with varying degrees of efficiency and delivery time of exam reports, which are critical to veterans’ disability determinations supporting their compensation and pension claim.

The new program management and delivery process will also continue to ensure broad national and international coverage of medical examination requirements to meet veterans’ needs world-wide.

ScaleUP America is a Small Business Administration (SBA) initiative that supports community efforts in assisting high-potential entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed. The U.S. Small Business Administration wants your input to decide which communities to deliver ScaleUp America programs to. The initiative’s objective is to provide the necessary support to assist these small businesses expand, thus strengthening the community’s economic stability.

The SBA is seeking proposals to identify which communities would best be served through the implementation of ScaleUp America. The SBA will be conducting a webinar about the solicitation process in order to promote interest and provide additional information to all interested parties. The webinar will be held Tuesday, July 1, 2014 at 3:00 pm ET.

Anyone interested in submitting a proposal should plan to join the webinar 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start by clicking HERE.  If you would like to submit a question to be answered in the webinar, please email it to tonihoskinson@sba.gov.  Emails should be sent no later than 3:00pm ET on June 30, 2014. All other questions and solicitations cab be emailed to tonihoskinson@sba.gov no later than 5:00 pm ET on July 2, 2014.

For information on solicitation for the ScaleUP America initiative, please follow the link to Intensive Entrepreneurship Curriculum and Service Delivery provided by www.fedbizops.com

Attention all Veteran owned technology and software firms… there is a huge opportunity coming your way. Starting in either July or August of 2014, the Department of Defense will begin shopping for a company or companies to design and manage a new information technology system to maintain all medical records for service members.

For years, Veterans have had to leave the military with fully completed medical and dental records, only to have to reapply with the VA’s health care system. The transition eats up a lot of time and resources. A new record system that carriesover between the military and the VA is long overdue.

In May of 2013, officials at the Pentagon announced that they intended to install an improved electronic system for maintaining service members’ health records. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel promised to work with the VA in developing a “seamless system” for service members and Veterans. In light of this year’s VA scandal involving backlogs and wait times, the time to implement a new records system is now.

Many heavy hitters in the tech industry will be bidding on the contract. Veteran business owners in the tech industry would be wise to pay attention to this, which is estimated to be a 10 year, $11 billion contract. Whoever wins the contract will most likely be mandated to hire sub-contractors who are Veterans or Veteran-owned companies.

Companies that are expected to compete for the contract include Accenture Plc, Northrop Grumman Corp, Leidos Holdings Inc., Hewlett-Packard Inc., and IBM, who has already announced their plan to partner with Epic Systems Corp in a bid for the contract. Maybe your Veteran owned business can be added to this list as well.

The winner of the bidding gets to claim one of the largest contracts in federal information technology. But after the failed launch of the Obamacare website, bidders and their proposals will be under heavy scrutiny.

But either way, Veterans should still come out ahead through better, faster healthcare, seamless healthcare records, and the potential for subcontracting with the winning bidder.

The Veteran and Military Business Owners Association (VAMBOA) is a non-profit business trade association that promotes and assists Veteran Business Owners, Service Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses (SDVOB) and Military Business Owners. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and responsible for job generation. That is why VAMBOA provides its members with Business Coaching, Contracting Opportunities, a Blog that provides information, Networking contacts and other resources. Membership is FREE to Veterans. Join Now!

VAMBOA: Upcoming $11 Billion Federal Contract: By Debbie Gregory