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Yes, it is possible for your FQHC to lose its HRSA Section 330 grant

If you’re a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), you’ve probably seen announcements like this one, from the Federal Register: “Service Area Competition – Additional Areas (SAC-AA) – Honolulu, Hawaii; College Station, Texas; and Rock Springs, Wyoming.” Those announcements may seem curious: why announce for a strangely small number of additional service areas?

Answers vary. Sometimes it’s because the current FQHC Section 330 grantee has screwed something up badly enough to have its SAC grant yanked (though this is rare). More often, HRSA simply didn’t get any qualified applications for SAC grants in a certain geography, leaving a given area without a Section 330 provider needs for basic healthcare.

We’ve been told some funny stories about HRSA’s reaction to inadequate applicants. Our favorite probably involves an FQHC that called us on a Wednesday or Thursday about a SAC application that was due Monday. We were flabbergasted by this request and knew that a SAC FOA wasn’t on the street anyway. Our client explained what happened: She’d forgotten about the SAC deadline and failed to submit an application. HRSA did the initial review and realized that our client’s application was missing, and no one else had submitted for that rural service area.

HRSA probably isn’t supposed to extend the deadline for applicants who forget about the competition, but HRSA also doesn’t want healthcare gaps. So in the case of our client, HRSA called, told the client to get off their rear, and demanded a proposal by the following Monday. Our client panicked and called us.

We were able to complete the proposal on time (professional grant writer at work, don’t try this at home), and not surprisingly the client got funded. In short, depending on your FQHC’s relationship with HRSA, you can get wildly different outcomes from the same inputs. Our client got lucky. You may not be. We recommend attending to SAC deadlines and making sure you submit a complete, technically accurate proposal before the due date.

We’ve worked on SAC projects for insurgents attempting to take down the current grantee, and we’ve also worked on projects for the current grantee who suddenly realizes that they need a more serious application due to the threat of upstarts. Both kinds of projects are fun for us, albeit in slightly different ways. Both kinds of projects are also a reminder to FQHCs: SAC stands for “Service Area Competition.” Don’t get cocky. We’ve seen lots of cocky clients lose their primary funding streams via hubris, laziness, or both. Success is never final. There are no guarantees in grant writing, and you should know that you may have to compete for your dinner at any time.

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