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HRSA sort of “Streamlines” FY ’18 Service Area Competition (SAC) NOFOs

As happens every year about this time, HRSA has been issuing Service Area Competition (SAC) Notices of Funding Funding Opportunities (NOFOs). As we’ve written before, HRSA requires Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs—otherwise known as Section 330 grantees) to compete every three years against non-grantees to keep their Section 330 grants. About one-third of the approximately 1,400 FQHCs must submit a technically correct SAC proposal every year.

We’re in the early stages of the FY ’18 SAC derby and, while the process is more or less the same this year, we came across this, on page 3 of this year’s NOFOs:

The Project Narrative has been streamlined to reduce applicant burden, more closely align with Health Center Program requirements as defined by statute and regulation, and simplify the collection of information.

(Emphasis added.)

Sounds great in theory, but let’s take a closer as what passes for streamlining in HRSA-land. The term “NOFO” replaces HRSA’s longstanding practice of calling their RFPs Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs). Thus, HRSA has replaced one pointless three-letter acronym with a similarly pointless four-letter acronym. In they had to change the acronym, why not just use the more common acronym “RFP?”

The FY ’17 SAC FOAs were 73 single-spaced pages, while the FY ’18 NOFOs are 67 single-spaced pages (NOFO length does not include the 365 single-spaced Service Area Announcement Table). It also doesn’t include the 66-page, single-spaced HRSA SF-424 Two-Tier Application Guide (love the doc name). The Guide has intricate formatting instructions for all HRSA grant submissions but often conflicts with the instructions with particular NOFOs, like SAC. Then there’s the voluminous underlying regs for the Section 330 program, but counting these pages would like counting grains of sand on Santa Monica beach.

In summary, HRSA has shaved six pages off of the 498 pages of instructions, not counting regs, or a generous 1.2%! We must applaud HRSA for this Herculean streamlining effort!

To be fair to HRSA, some items previously required of all applicants, like floor plans, no longer must be submitted by current grantees. Also, current grantees don’t have to answer a few of the repetitive questions in the Program Narrative. Still, the SAC applications may not exceed 160 pages “when printed by HRSA.” Despite the digital application upload process, HRSA still prints and copies proposals for reviewers to read in hard copy—partying just like it’s 1999. This is a good reason to avoid color graphics in federal proposals, as most will be printed and copied in grayscale for reviewers.

For FY ’18, HRSA also still requires a two-step application process: the first step in a relatively simply application uploaded through grants.gov, while the second step is the fiendishly complicated online application through HRSA’s Byzantine Electronic Handbooks (EHB) system.

Without doing a deep dive into the SAC NOFOs, a couple of features remaining in the FY ’18 NOFOs illustrate why HRSA using the term “streamlined” might be euphemistic.

There’s a convoluted section of the Project Narrative called “Governance,” where applicants must explain how their governance structure meets complex Section 330 requirements. For current grantees—some of which have received SAC grants for decades—this is odd, since these applicant couldn’t have been funded before if they didn’t meet these requirements. Also, even current grantees must upload copies of their articles of incorporation and bylaws as attachments. One would think that after, say, four SAC grants, HRSA probably doesn’t need another copies of the Owatonna Community Health Center’s articles and bylaws (I made this up, but there probably is a FQHC in Owatonna, MN).

Also, in addition to the grants.gov application file, Abstract, Project Narrative, and Budget/Budget Narrative, the EHB application includes 13 required forms and 12 required attachments for all applicants, including existing grantees.

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