allowable use of funds RESADM-L Member 18 Nov 2003 14:03 EST
RESADM-L'ers, especially those of you at hospitals, our hospital has just received a grant agreement from the state to award some federal funds from the HRSA Bioterrorism Grant. The State agency is administering the federal dollars as the primary grantee and has crafted agreements to subaward the dollars to hospitals at various levels in the State's tier of emergency resource hospitals. We have not developed a proposal for these dollars. But we have been asked to sign the grant agreement, which has several problems. Beyond the question of whether or not the agreement terms are reasonable, a question has arisen whether or not one of terms directs us to do something that we cannot legally do. The grant agreement directs the hospital to "correct priority deficiences" of "pre-hospital" providers (emergency medical services providers, ambulance companies) by providing them with needed personal protection equipment. Ignore, for the sake of this question, the issue that the grantee is directed to correct another organization's deficiency, and consider the question of conflict of interest. Can the hospital legitimately use grant (or any other) funds to purchase equipment for EMS providers? Our Foundation VP has compared this to a situtation we backed away from a few years ago when we wanted to raise funds to buy 12-lead EKG equipment for ambulance companies. Even though we proposed treating all ambulance companies in our region equally for the EKG program, it was squashed on the basis that we would be "buying influence" with the ambulance companies and thus violating... I don't know, an Anti-Kickback law? I'm not sure the same argument would apply to the flow-through federal funds from the State because the State is directing the federal dollars to other hospitals, geographic boundaries apply, and our competitor hospitals would presumably also be receving funds to assist pre-hospital providers of emergency services. Your thoughts? ----------------- Molly Daniel Grants Specialist Planning Dept. Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center 1000 Health Center Drive Mattoon, IL 61938-0372 tel. 217-258-2195 fax 217-258-4135 email: xxxxxx@sblhs.org <mailto:xxxxxx@sblhs.org> web: www.sarahbush.org <http://www.sarahbush.org> ====================================================================== Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") ======================================================================