The Department of Veterans Affairs, Veteran Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) 7, 8, 9 and 16 and the Department of Defense, 81st Regional Support Command teamed to negotiate a sharing agreement between VA and DOD.   This agreement allowed Army Reservists to receive physical examinations, immunizations and dental screenings at 20 VA Medical Centers throughout the southeastern United States.   The agreement reduces the time for reservists to receive the various examinations from two months to two weeks at the medical centers, while maintaining the same high level of service to veterans.   This agreement created additional revenue that will be used to enhance the medical treatment of veterans seen throughout in the southeastern United States.

For the successful negotiation of an Interagency Agreement between the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense, to efficiently utilize medical resources to provide medical and dental examinations of Army Reservists located throughout the southeastern United States.   This agreement created an additional revenue stream for the treatment of veterans and is expected to expand throughout the Defense Department and to all VA Medical Centers.

The acquisition team at the Richmond VAMC developed an electronic database that provides significant efficiencies through immediate access and retrieval of information that previously required lengthy manual searches through numerous contract files.   This database automatically assigns contract numbers, and allow numerous management reports to be accomplished based on the completed fields in the program, i.e., vendor, contract type, description, socioeconomic class, contracting officer, expiration date etc.   All fields can be queried instantly to gather information for local, VISN or Headquarters report requirements.   Access to this contract database is available to all acquisition managers, contracting and networked VISN end users via their desktop system.   For the successful development of a desktop contract database program the Richmond VAMC Team was given the 1st Honorable Mention Award.

The National Acquisition Center's Medical/Surgical standardization team awarded 128 agreements for the VA National Standardization Program valued in excess of $77M, with a cost savings of $16M.   The team worked hard to become familiar with the with the technical aspects of health care products necessary to develop an effective negotiation strategy and awarded contract agreements for high quality healthcare supplies at the best price.   Although they saved approximately $16M while providing excellent service, they also allocated over 50% of standardization program funds to small, small disadvantaged businesses and blind workshops, emphasizing VA's commitment to meet the socioeconomic goals established for the Department.

For the successfully awarding 128 agreements for VA's National Medical/Surgical Standardization program, the National Acquisition Center's (NAC) Medical Surgical Standardization team was given the 2nd Honorable Mention Award .

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