Effort Reporting Guide for Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Faculty:

Based on the most frequently asked questions, the following guide is provided to assist School of Medicine faculty in making reasonable estimates for their effort reporting.

1. May I still confer with my department administrators?

Yes, you are encouraged to continue reviewing your effort with your department administrator and director. What has changed is that you, not your administrator, are responsible for and must submit the final effort certification.

2. Am I expected to make an exact calculation of my effort?

It is not expected that you will be able to make an exact calculation; rather, you should make your best reasonable estimate of the average effort provided to each activity where you devote 1% or more of your time under your Hopkins employment. It is most important that you allocate a reasonable % of effort to each activity you performed. It is understood that many of your activities are of a mixed purpose making it difficult to separate them into the reportable categories of employed effort. It is the intent of this guide to help you make such reasonable estimates by the approaches described below.

3. How do I determine what is my total employed time?

Your total employed time is the average total time (hours) that you devote to research, clinical, teaching, and administrative activities for Johns Hopkins. This includes time spent at Hopkins facilities and time spent working on Hopkins responsibilities at home or at other locations. It does include time you spend on your continuing education and reading journals, both of which should be allocated to the employed activity they most support. It does not include the time you devote to non-Hopkins commitments (professional or personal) for which you are a volunteer or receive separate payment. Thus, if you work an average of sixty hours (60 hours) per week on Hopkins activities, your total employed time is 60 hours. If you work another ten (10) hours on outside activities, these ten (10) hours do not count toward total employed time. For example, you may spend an average total of 60 hours on Johns Hopkins activities and an average total 10 hours a week on Heart Association, court appearances for individual expert advice, study section reviews and professional journal editing activities. Your reportable effort for Johns Hopkins would be only 60 hours, not 70 hours. In all cases, you should be prepared to document your certified effort estimates as reasonable based upon your calendar, clinic and teaching schedules, and work records.

4. What time period is used to measure effort?

Faculty effort reports are filed at the end of each six-month period, i.e., each 26-week period. Your percentage of effort for various activities should be averaged over the six-month period. If your schedule does not vary significantly on a week- to-week basis, you may look at an average week to express effort. If your schedule varies significantly from week to week, you may need to average your effort over a longer period.

5. My schedule varies a lot over a six-month period. One month may all be research and the next month may be a mixture of research and teaching. Could you give me an example of how someone like me might report effort?

Because the reporting period is 26 weeks, if you work an average of 60 hours a week on Hopkins activities, your denominator for the reporting period would be 1,560 hours (60 hrs. x 26 weeks). If you spent 1,100 hours on a research grant over that period, your effort would be about 70% on the grant. Likewise, if you spent 230 hours each on clinical care and teaching, your effort for these activities would be about 15% each. Alternatively, you may estimate your effort for each month or week and then average the results for the six- month reporting period.

6. Once I have determined my average total employed time how does that affect the effort I report for each activity?

If your average week involves 60 hours of time devoted to Hopkins activities, a 3-hour clinic could be reported as 5% of your total employed effort. Likewise, if your weeks vary significantly but over the 26-week period you spent a total of 78 hours in clinic, your clinic effort would be reported as 5% of your total employed effort.

7. If I have a consulting contract with a Government Agency or private company,
is this "Johns Hopkins activity"?

If you have an individual consulting contract (e.g., with a drug company or device manufacturer) where you are paid directly by a party other than Johns Hopkins, this contract is individual effort, not Johns Hopkins employed effort. All written consulting agreements must be submitted to the Office of Policy Coordination for review and possible referral to the Committee on Conflict of Interest. Where the University enters into an arrangement with a company and you are paid by Johns Hopkins, the arrangement is considered a Johns Hopkins employed activity.

8. If I receive support from affiliated institutions how should I report the effort?

Affiliated institutions provide funds for faculty salary for several different purposes; 1) affiliated services such as supervision of an ICU should be reported as affiliated services effort, 2) sub-contracted sponsored support should be reported as sponsored projects effort, and 3) clinical services should be reported as clinical activities.

9. How am I to allocate my clinical time between clinical activities and clinical
research?

The time you spend treating patients and completing the required patient-care paperwork should be reported as clinical activities. All patient care that is billed to third party insurers or to the patient must be reported as clinical activities. If clinical procedures are billed to or supported by research funds, the effort might be reported as either research or clinical activities depending upon whether your role was as a researcher or clinician, respectively. When you perform a clinical study that involves both routine care billed to the patient's insurance and research procedures supported by the study, you are asked to make a reasonable estimate that allocates your study effort between clinical activities and sponsored activities. Time spent in clinical environments performing clinical research activities (e.g., recruiting subjects, performing research supported procedures, supervising research staff and analyzing research data) should be reported as research effort.

10. How should I report time spent if my role is both as a researcher and
clinician?

If you are engaged in clinical care of patients and also are engaged in a research protocol with respect to those same patients, you should report the time you spend on standard of care procedures as clinical care. You should report the time you spend on any additional or extra procedures for research, e.g., taking extra tissue samples, extra tests, etc., as research time.

11. How should I manage my effort when I have an NIH K Award?

The sponsored research supported by a K Award is constrained by the scope of the proposal. If additional projects are undertaken that overlap with the K Award scope, you may use the effort supported by the K Award to participate in the other related projects. If however the additional research activity does not overlap with the K Award work scope, the effort provided to the additional research project must be separately accounted for and supported beyond the minimum effort required for the K Award. Usually the K Award precludes eligibility for additional federal salary support except for late stage additional grants allowed by some K Awards. Accordingly the salary support for research that does not overlap with the scope of the K Award usually must come from a non-federal source.

Individuals holding K Awards may perform clinical activities "required by the research-related activities" of the K Award as clinical research effort supported by the K Award. Other patient care effort, not required to perform the research under the K Award, must be reported as clinical activities or sponsored activities if funded by another research award.

12. How should I report my clinical on-call time with my other clinical activities?

Being on-call can vary from providing on-site coverage to attending rounds and being available for telephone consultation. While the clinical demands vary, on-call time is rarely spent as 100% employed time. Accordingly, you should only include the on-call time that was actually worked. Thus for on-call activity that required you to be on-site or occurred during your normal work time you should report the effort actually spent dealing with patient issues as clinical activity, while the other time should be allocated to other employed activities performed while you were on-site (research, teaching, etc.). If your on-call time was other than during your normal work time, you should count only the hours actually required for rounds, seeing patients and attending to consults. When estimating your total clinical activities over the past six months, you should combine the portion of your on-call time that was actually devoted to clinical activity with your more routine clinical responsibilities. Thus if you usually work 60 hours per week, and (i) spend one three hour morning in clinic every week, (ii) are on-call every fourth week and 25% of that time is spent in clinical activities, and (iii) you spend an additional 10% of your time in other clinical activity, your combined average clinical activity over a four week period (60 hrs x 4 = 240 hrs) may be calculated as follows (assuming that none of your clinical time was devoted to clinical research):

Clinic: (3 hrs x 4wk) = 12 = 5%
240 hrs 240

On Call: 25% (60 hrs x 1wk) = 15 = 6.25%
240 hrs 240

Other Clinical
Activities: 10% (60hrs x 4wk) = 24 = 10%
240 hrs 240
____
Total Average Clinical Effort = 21%

13. What should be reported as instructional effort?

Time spent 1) teaching courses (including preparation time), 2) providing formal mentoring (e.g., time spent in reviewing a mentee's career or dissertation plans), and 3) being the PI on a training grant should be reported as instruction. The extra time it takes to perform clinical activities with students in an educational institution should be reported as part of clinical activities effort. The extra time it takes to perform research with students in an educational institution should be reported as part of research activities.

14. What is reportable administrative activity?

Time devoted to administrative responsibilities (e.g., being a department director, standing committee member, grant proposal preparation etc.) should be separately reported if they amount to 1% or more of total employed time.

15. How should I report time preparing research grant proposal forms?

Time spent preparing competitive research grant proposal forms should be reported as administrative time. This does not include time spent performing preliminary research, or preparing progress reports on already awarded research grants.

16. What should be reported as sponsored effort or sponsored research?

Only the time devoted to awarded grants and contracts or authorized pre-award costs should be reported as sponsored activities (sometimes referred to as sponsored research). Research time that is not supported by or pledged to separately allocated project budgets (e.g., unrestricted institutional funds or gifts) should be included in your instruction/university sponsored activity.

17. Whom do I contact if I have additional questions?

If you have additional questions please contact your department administrator, or Lynn Kingsley in the Controller's Office lkingsley@jhu.edu, or Michael Amey in the Office of Research Administration mamey@jhmi.edu.

February 18, 2004