Respect, Collaboration Critical to Federal Health Grants Funding

Funding through the acquisition of government grants is a critical — but often misunderstood — health care component as industry leaders, academics and researchers alike can struggle to meet government standards.

Evaluation of grant funding relies on evidence to drive decision making from the application phase to the award phase, said Lia Melakou, vice president for Health & Citizens Solutions Group at Highlight Technology, at the 2024 GovCIO Media & Research Health IT Summit.

“We want grant policy makers to be making informed decisions,” Melakou said. “Federal agencies want to look at these grantees and make sure there’s compliance and the regulatory items are in place before making awards. Another thing, and we had spoken about this before, is really accountability and transparency.”

Dr. Carolyn Clancy, VHA assistant undersecretary for Health Discovery Education and Affiliate Networks, said that when it comes to collaboration between private sector and clinicians to deliver care through the use of grants, success will come from a “combination of top down and bottom up.”

“There are clearly people on the ground who are burning with passion and have some brilliant ideas and want to improve and know exactly what they need to do now. They can’t build their own army. They’ve got to get support from leadership and so forth,” Clancy told the audience.

Clancy highlighted the need for more partners to help manage the delivery of care, but also emphasized the need to develop an “alignment between this is what we’re trying to achieve as a system and here’s what it means…wherever it is that you’re working.”

Understanding Pain Points

Tackling challenges in funding will require understanding where pain points lie for clinicians and then developing a strategy with them to overcome them, according to Clancy. She said that partners looking to work with clinicians need to be sensitive of their primary work of providing patient care, avoiding overburdening them with new technology or processes that don’t work in their organization.

“It is, in my mind, a given that every worker in health care wants to provide flawless care, timely, safe, high quality [care]. It does not always happen,” Clancy said. “I would say that gifted researchers would have people on the team who know how to walk around and watch what’s happening. ‘Where are we getting stuck?’ and so on and so forth, and anticipating that and building it into the process.”

Melakou pointed to the rise of data reporting systems like USAspending.gov and the FFATA Subaward Reporting System (FSRS), that allow federal agencies to monitor and track how their grant money is being spent and flag potential fraud.

“I think data is going to drop both of those aspects, one to make sure we’re making awards to qualified applicants, but also to make sure that there are checks in the back end for financial and fiscal responsibility,” Melakou said.