Healthcare Social Media and Updates

Grant-Funded Pilots Die without Upfront Purchase Commitment

A health system once celebrated our Health Tech partnership’s amazing results, and then walked away - all because of the most dangerous word in innovation: “grant-funded.” I've watched more grant-funded pilots quietly die than I care to count. The problem? A grant is a lottery ticket. It can help a health system try your product, but it’s not proof of having truly sold anything yet. Lemme explain with a story… We once won a grant to pilot @SeamlessMD at a health system. We had an amazing clinical champion and together we reduced readmissions by 50%+. Turning this grant into long-term funding felt inevitable. That is, until we presented the results to the C-suite...only to find out that readmissions reduction wasn't a strategic priority for them. So despite our “success”, there was no path to procurement. Upon reflection, if we had instead asked them to buy upfront, we would have gotten one of two answers: either a “No”, which would've saved us months of hard work, or a “Yes” tied to a different KPI that actually mattered to them. Either way, we'd have been better off. Here's what first-time innovators miss about the value of a true purchase: when a health system pays out of a real operating budget, a human being stuck their neck out. They made a case to finance, defended the ROI and must own the outcome now. That accountability ensures that the Health Tech brought in not only must matter enough to get funded in the first place, but it creates an incentive to ensure the initiative goes well. Because if you don’t take the initiative seriously, no one will trust you with money again in the future. Whereas with a grant, nobody’s neck is truly on the line. All you need to do is complete the project and submit a report - success doesn’t truly matter. Which means when the grant runs out, the uncomfortable question of “should we actually pay for this?” must finally be asked. But this is actually a question that should have been answered BEFORE the grant started, not after. Now, I'm NOT saying to never take grant funding. In the early days, when you have zero customers and zero proof points, and grants help you get your first users, they are awesome. Grants help you cover costs while you prove value and figure out your implementation playbook. But once you’re actively selling your product in market, if you’re consistently relying on grants to get in the door - something’s wrong. Because if there's real product-market fit, you should be able to get purchased without needing a grant. So if you're going to take a grant, ask yourself these questions first: 1/ Is there a clinical or operational leader who would fight for the budget if the grant disappeared tomorrow? 2/ Is there an internal executive sponsor whose performance is tied to this initiative succeeding? If the answers are no, your grant-funded pilot is permanently at-risk until proven otherwise. Grants can open doors, but they definitely can't keep them open.