For your role

RHTP for healthcare consultancies and advisors.

Two real routes. Win a state technical-assistance procurement, or subcontract to a funded recipient. Consultancies are contractors, not subgrantees, and that distinction is what shapes how you bid, scope, and price.

Your money path

Two routes, one common gotcha.

  1. 01

    Win a state technical-assistance procurement.

    States issue RFPs for technical assistance, facilitation, evaluation, agency benchmarking, and plan-design help. Watch each state's central procurement portal in your target geographies. Multi-state TA contracts exist, but most are state-by-state.

  2. 02

    Subcontract to a funded recipient.

    A hospital, FQHC, nonprofit, or collaborative wins a subaward and procures consulting services out of it. This is the dominant model for application support, program design, and implementation work. Your recipient handles the 2 CFR Part 200 compliance; you deliver and invoice.

The common gotcha: helping a recipient write the application and then bidding to deliver it has to be structured around the recipient's procurement rules. Disclose, document, separate the roles, and let the recipient run a competitive process where required.

What you need

Prerequisites before the first bid.

  • Federal registration

    Active UEI and SAM.gov registration, not on the federal exclusions list.

  • State vendor registrations

    Each state where you intend to bid. Many require state-specific business registration in addition to vendor enrollment.

  • Conflict-of-interest posture

    Documented separation between application authorship and downstream contracting where both apply. Recipient procurement rules govern.

  • Pricing schema

    Rate cards or fixed-fee structures that map to government procurement norms. Negotiated indirect rates help on subcontract work; the program-wide 10 percent administrative cap constrains what your recipient can recognize.

How to frame

Help your client beat anti-supplantation. Then prove sustainability.

Two framings decide most outcomes, and as the advisor you are usually the one who writes them.

Beat the anti-supplantation trap

Your client's application cannot read as "fund our existing service." Rewrite the same capability as new, measurable transformation with baselines and explicit targets. Workforce-sustainability, access-expansion, and value-based-readiness framings are usually defensible; pure operating-cost framings are not.

Answer "what pays for this after 2030"

CMS weights sustainability heavily. Map a credible bridge to Medicaid billing, payer reimbursement, or value-based contracting after the five-year window. Applications without that bridge underperform applications with it.

Where to start

The next links.

FAQ

Consultant questions, answered.

  • Can a consultancy receive an RHTP subaward directly?

    Almost never. Consultancies are properly contractors under 2 CFR Part 200, not subgrantees. The two real routes are winning a state technical-assistance procurement and subcontracting to a funded recipient.

  • Which kinds of state procurements should we track?

    Technical assistance, facilitation, evaluation, plan-design support, agency benchmarking, and RFP-development assistance. States issue these as RFPs through their central procurement portals; each state's portal is its own watch.

  • How does the Consultancy License compare to a Pro subscription?

    The Pro subscription is a single-firm seat plan. The Consultancy License adds white-label rights for client deliverables, unlimited firm-wide seats, production API access, and quarterly briefings. Most multi-client firms find the license is the cleaner buy.

  • What is the compliance load for a consultancy contractor?

    Lighter than a subrecipient's. Deliver per the contract, document invoices, meet your state vendor terms. You do not inherit the recipient's 2 CFR Part 200 obligations or their Single Audit, though your conflict-of-interest and federal-exclusion posture has to be clean.

  • Can a consultancy be both contractor and subaward author?

    Yes. Consultancies routinely author the subaward application that a hospital or FQHC submits, then become the procured contractor that helps the recipient deliver. The boundary between authoring and operating has to be documented to avoid conflict-of-interest issues.

Bring source-cited intelligence to every client.

The Consultancy License gives your firm white-label rights, unlimited seats, and quarterly briefings. Or start with an Atlas for a specific client.