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BCC Transition

Points for Internal Consumption

  • Changes to be made are not proposals; they are THE way to implement this
  • Keep in mind the significant loss of % effort coverage from collaboration plans that needs to be made up for
  • Average increase in % effort for staff is about 11% (will vary by grant); need to realize this increase because of the point above
  • Supervising statisticians need to do a detailed check of the calculations before discussion with the PI; feedback to Seth or Ron
  • Update the budget with information you have (or can get) about the current grant budget year as of 2014-07-01
  • Frank is ready to help run interference for you
  • This has to be completed extremely quickly; there is a great risk if we have to make retro adjustments in August, especially when there is a cost increase

Points to Make to Collaborators If Needed

  • Present this as good news for the vast majority of PIs; adequate biostat support without a budget increase, and large reduction in collaboration fee
  • In some cases, hourly billing has been below budgeted effort for staff, due to several factors
    • statisticians are bad at hourly billing
    • Some PIs tried to save grant budget $ by minimizing staff statistician involvement
      • giving some tasks to faculty biostatisticians
      • asking staff statisticians not to come to research team meetings
  • The original budget is what we AND the PI deemed appropriate for the work to be done
  • The % effort budgeted covers everything that needs to be done to meet the PI's goals for the grant; we are professionals and the staff biostatisticians will work until the job is done
  • RAs for our graduate students are handled separately; these discussions are only for staff biostatisticians; no change in method/cost of graduate students from what is already being done on grants
  • Collaborations that are not currently charging any collaboration fee will be required to have an increase in the budget; these will probably generate more discussion
    • Let collaborators know that what they have been paying the the past was the result of "grandfathering" certain collaborations and in addition these would not have survived an NIH audit due to other NIH-funded grants being charged more (i.e., includes the collaboration fee)
  • Terminology for $8500/yr/FTE: collaboration fee
  • It covers several areas, two of the most significant being IT support/hardware/software and professional development costs
  • Collaborating statisticians do not have the same opportunities for budgeting professional meetings on grant budgets
  • We have no clinical income nor SOM coverage for true costs for biostatisticians other than telephone and basic supplies
  • National statistical meetings provide statisticians with skills that benefit all grants
  • One statistical meeting per year is necessary for continuing education / skills acquisition for new biomedical technologies

To Do

  • See if some statistician involvement needs to increase beyond 100% by bringing in part of another statistician
  • Make an ongoing tally of % effort for each staff statistician (Amie)

Exceptions

  • A few small projects that will completely finish within 2 months will not need to be transitions. For any outstanding BCC billing to be sent out we will need to maintain a very small % effort in the BCC for involved faculty and staff

-- FrankHarrell - 15 Jul 2014
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Topic revision: r2 - 15 Jul 2014, FrankHarrell
 

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