HRSA’s Uniform Data System (UDS) Mapper is powerful but also incredibly hard to use, and I suspect most people get stymied by its clunky user interface—and give up. The difficulty of using the UDS Mapper inspires me to write a guide describing how we tend to use it. “Giving up” is a legitimate reaction to software with a poor user experience and user interface, but giving up won’t help a HRSA needs assessment get done, and it won’t move your organization closer to being funded. Healthcare organizations like Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in particular need to use the UDS Mapper. However frustrating the UDS Mapper may be, the UDS Mapper also collects healthcare indicator data not available anywhere else, and for that reason it’s useful not just in HRSA or healthcare proposals, but a wide range of other proposals.
If you look closely at the UDS Mapper’s output, you’ll see what I mean in terms of HRSA collecting data others don’t. The curiously named set of columns for the “health center penetration rate” in particular can yield insights into local areas; are people who are low income or living in poverty managing to access healthcare? I’m not aware of other places that collate such data. The Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) tab similarly gathers data not readily available elsewhere.
Right now, it’s also Service Area Competition (SAC) season, which means mabt FQHCs need to use the UDS tool, along with others like it, to prepare their SAC applications. We’ve written about the SAC experience in a bunch of places, including here, and we encourage organizations that are applying for SAC or other HRSA funding to contact us.
I developed the UDS Mapper guide to be used internally, but it occurs to me that others may find it useful, so I’m uploading it here. Questions or comments? Leave them below. This draft of our guide isn’t the last word.