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Health department seeks sole‑source reagents and newborn screening supplies; agency says contracts are fee‑funded and essential
Summary
The Department of Health presented sole‑source and amendment contracts for newborn screening instruments, reagents and rapid tests (OraQuick) that the agency said are essential to continuity of the newborn screening program and largely funded by hospital‑collected fees.
Mike Critchfield, legislative liaison for the Department of Health, asked the committee to approve several amendments and sole‑source contracts to support newborn screening and laboratory services. He described a sole‑source request for genetic screening kits and reagents from Revedy Health Sciences and said the contract is funded by hospital fees collected for the newborn screening program.
Critchfield said failure to maintain these contracts would negatively impact the department’s ability to screen roughly 85,000 infants born in Tennessee each year and that some contracts are 99% state funded with a 1% interdepartmental reimbursement from TennCare. The committee approved the presented items by voice vote.
