HRSA HAB selects WRMA

Summary

In 2004, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), HIV/AIDS Bureau (HAB) contracted with WRMA and our subcontractor CSR, Inc, to provide technical assistance (TA) to its Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) grantees to aid in the submission and validation of their required reporting data. WRMA won the contract due to our demonstrated expertise in providing TA to government grantees.

Since then, HRSA HAB and WRMA have partnered on sequential contracts, at first providing TA for three aggregate-level reports, to assisting HRSA HAB with transferring to client-level data reports, to presently providing TA to grantees for nine data reports — two of which contain client-level data.

Details

The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act was enacted in 1990 to improve access to quality health care and support services for HIV-infected individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS. The Act was amended and re-authorized in 1996, 2000, 2006, and, most recently, in 2009 as the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program awards grants to cities, states, and territories that distribute the funds among local health care providers under Parts A and B and to local community-based organizations that focus on Early Intervention Services under Part C and Children, Infants, Youth, and Families under Part D. In addition, Part F awards grants for Special Projects of National Significance, AIDS Education and Training Centers, Dental Programs, and the Minority AIDS Initiative. A major component of Part B is the AIDS Drug Assistance Program.

WRMA, along with its subcontractor, CSR Inc., provides a wide range of technical support to HRSA HAB and their recipients funded under Parts A, B, C, D, and F of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009. Under this project, the WRMA team offers training and TA to grantees and their service providers in areas such as data collection, reporting, validation, and verification through telephone and email, at annual in-person training sessions, through regularly scheduled webinars, and at biannual all recipient meetings. WRMA also supports HRSA HAB in developing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) justification packages for all its information collections and has evaluated selected HRSA HAB cooperative agreement programs.

Currently, the WRMA team provides TA to HRSA HAB and its recipients on a total of nine data reports and systems. These include the:

• RSR
• ADR
• Program Terms Report (PTR)
• RWHAP Expenditures Report
• HIV Quality Measures Report (HIVQM)
• Dental Services Report (DSR)
• AIDS Education and Training Centers (AETC) grant report
• Ending the HIV Epidemic Report (EHE)

Additionally, the WRMA team provides TA on the Grantee Contract Management System (GCMS). In addition to direct training and TA provided via the phone, email, and in-person conferences, the team also writes and updates the manuals and other educational materials that accompany each report and conducts webinars that train grantees on each report.

In January 2022, WRMA supported HRSA HAB to go live with a new cloud-based Dental Services Report (DSR) data collection system. Previously, the Dental Reimbursement Program (DRP) applicants and the Community-Based Dental Partnership Program (CBDPP) grant recipients submitted annual aggregate DSR data via a Microsoft Access Database that was updated and published each year. This system hindered HRSA HAB from being adaptive to data collection changes and ensuring year-to-year data quality. The new solution provides a single location to notify respondents of pertinent information pertaining to the DSR, ensure applicants use consistent agency naming across years, generate status reports to show who’s actively working, and be responsive to year-to-year updates. Together with HRSA HAB, we’ve brought the DSR data reporting into the 21^st century.