Rural Health Transformation Program Grants Solution

The Vendor is required to provide a grants management system.
- Currently manages grants through manual, fragmented processes that rely on email and spreadsheets for application intake, tracking, review, and reporting.
- This approach creates administrative burden, delays, limited visibility into performance, and dependence on individual staff knowledge.
- Provide to administer new federal rural health transformation (RHT) Program grants, these inefficiencies pose a significant challenge to ensuring timely, equitable, and transparent distribution of funds to a relatively small population of rural providers.
- The system will include up to 100 internal SOV users, 30 grant programs and an expected 500 applicants and 1000 applications.
- A modernized Grants Management System would streamline intake through an online portal, automate workflows for eligibility, scoring, and reporting, and integrate financial and program data for holistic oversight.
- Dashboards would provide real-time visibility into grant performance, while self-service portals would give rural healthcare providers transparency into application status, award decisions, and reporting requirements.
- Staff time could be redirected from clerical tasks to program oversight and strategic work, improving both efficiency and accountability as state implements these transformative federal investments.
- The system should support profile-based grant applications, allowing rural healthcare providers to maintain a reusable organizational profile with core information (such as eligibility documentation, financials, and compliance certifications).
- Grant Program:
• Support multiple grant programs with distinct criteria, cycles, budget caps, workflows, and application timeframes
• Utilize role-based access control (RBAC) for internal and external roles
• Online profile-based portal for standardized applications, status tracking and awards
• Utilize existing state authentication methods for external and internal users
• Public facing components that meet WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards
- Application Intake
• Public facing portal to allow applicants to apply and check status
• Reminders to mitigate missed deadlines or incomplete documentation
• User interface with conditional logic, dynamic sections and field validation
• Accept file uploads with type/size limits and virus scanning
• Draft save for applicants and partners
- Reviewing and Scoring
• Workflow driven eligibility checks
• Scoring rubrics with weighted criteria, comments, and attachments
• Support and document panel reviews, reviewer scores and award decisions
- Award Determination
• Support award recommendations, scenario planning and budget optimization
• Generate award letters via templates
• Support e-signature integration (DocuSign)
• Track special conditions, match commitments, and reporting obligations
- Agreement/Contract Management
• Generate agreements from templated clause libraries and approval workflows
• Track agreement versions, amendments, extensions, and effective dates
• Manage deliverables/milestones and tie them to disbursement schedules
- Financials & Disbursements
• Track awards, obligations, encumbrances, expenditures, balances by fiscal year
• Integrate with the state Financial System (e.g., journal entries, vendors) via batch
• Support sub recipient monitoring, indirect cost rates, and allowable cost checks