HRSA requires health centers to query the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) for all clinical staff, including unlicensed or uncertified Other Clinical Staff (OCS). After flip-flopping the HRSA Site Visit Protocol language in 2020 and again in November 2025, HRSA's intent remains clear: query every LIP, OLCP, and OCS upon hire and on a recurring basis. Here's what the current guidance says, why querying OCS matters, and how to stay site-visit-ready.

Are you ready to submit your FTCA redeeming application in 2026? This blog post will help!

Quarterly FTCA Risk Assessments are a critical safeguard for FTCA-deemed health centers, yet many submissions fall short of current HRSA expectations. A strong assessment goes beyond completing a tool and must clearly demonstrate how risks were identified, analyzed, prioritized, and acted upon to reduce malpractice exposure. This blog post breaks down the essential elements reviewers look for and highlights why compliant assessments are vital to patient safety and FTCA protection. A full checklist is included to help health centers evaluate the quality and completeness of their quarterly assessments.

Health centers participating in the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) program are required to implement a comprehensive risk management strategy to reduce the likelihood of adverse outcomes that could result in medical malpractice or other health-related litigation. A key component of this strategy is the completion of quarterly risk assessments.

So, you’re done with submitting your UDS data for the year and you are now turning your focus to this year’s Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) application…you may be asking yourself, “What do I need to do first?”.

Health centers seeking Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) coverage must adhere to specific requirements regarding their Annual Board Risk Management Reports. This blog post will delve into the essential components of these reports and provide guidance on how to meet HRSA's expectations.

If you are like most health centers this year, you may have been overwhelmed with the changes in the FTCA (Federal Tort Claims Act) requirements. You may have felt the changes were unclear and you were confused about how to meet the requirements. Or maybe you had significant turnover in your staff and some of your quarterly Risk Management Assessments or risk management trainings fell through the cracks. The submission deadline may have crept up on you amidst summer vacations, EMR “go-lives”, and budgetary struggles. If any of this describes your experience, you’re not alone.

But the silver lining in all of this is that you made it through and now is the time to put the systems in place so next year’s application is much less stressful! In the following article, we will share strategies for moving toward continuous FTCA compliance.

The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) assessment in the FTCA Deeming Requirements section of the Site Visit Protocol (SVP) was discontinued effective October 27, 2023.

Community health centers are required to develop and maintain policies or procedures that demonstrate the health center is working to mitigate patient safety risks. Four of those policies are Referral Tracking (RT), Hospitalization Tracking (HT), Diagnostic Tracking (DT), and After-Hours Call Follow-up Tracking (AH) policies.

HRSA has updated this year’s FTCA deeming application! The RegLantern team has reviewed the document in detail and guides your team through the changes.

FTCA redeeming application…don’t wait!

HRSA updates Site Visit Protocol with minor changes focused on look-alikes and FTCA-deemed organizations.

HRSA has recently updated its FTCA application requirements. Read more how health centers can be prepared.

HRSA released two new tools to help health centers improve their Form 5B accuracy.

Health centers often wonder how utilizing volunteer health professionals impacts their FTCA deeming.