NOT-HS-19-007: AHRQ Announces Change in Grant Recipient Purchasing of Identifiable CMS Data, effective FY2019

NOT-HS-19-007: AHRQ Announces Change in Grant Recipient Purchasing of Identifiable CMS Data, effective FY2019



AHRQ Announces Change in Grant Recipient Purchasing of Identifiable CMS Data, effective FY2019

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Notice Number: NOT-HS-19-007

Key Dates
Release Date: January 11, 2019

Related Announcements
None

Issued by
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

Purpose

The purpose of this Notice is to inform the research community that the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will be phasing out the Inter-agency Agreement (IAA) it has maintained for the purchase of identifiable Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data used on AHRQ-supported grants.

Historically, the IAA that AHRQ maintained with CMS for the purchase of identifiable CMS data for AHRQ grantees had provided a benefit to AHRQ, CMS, and grantees using identifiable CMS data.  However, grant applicants can now obtain accurate costs estimates for identifiable CMS data and pay directly for such data (see the Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC) website: https://www.resdac.org/).  For this reason, applicants will be required to request and budget for the purchase of identifiable CMS data within grant application proposals, just as they currently do for non-identifiable CMS data or for data from other sources.

This is a change from AHRQ’s long-standing procedure of having applicants describe identifiable CMS data needs and their estimated costs in the grant application narrative but not including the cost of identifiable CMS data on the detailed budget page. Effective beginning with the February 2019 Application Cycle, applicants must include identifiable CMS data costs within the requested application budget. Applicants must account for associated indirect costs, and abide by any total cost cap imposed by an AHRQ funding opportunity announcement (FOA).