President Submits Budget to Congress: Most Health IT Programs Escape Major Cuts
February 4, 2008 -
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the President submitted his fiscal year 2009 (FY09) budget to Congress, highlighting health IT adoption under a section called "Promoting Market Based Health Care." Overall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is scheduled for a 2.1% reduction in its $70 billion dollar discretionary budget.
The President says his budget, "Facilitates health information technology advancements," by supporting the "adoption of health information technology as a normal cost of doing business, including policies that will encourage physicians and others to adopt electronic health records and through furthering technologies for safe, secure health information exchange." The program budget for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) is slated for a $5 million increase over FY08, if Congress approves the amount requested. This would have positive implications for the programs ONC is currently implementing, such as the Nationwide Health Information Network trial implementations.
This year, as in previous years, the President's budget requests funding for ONC from two sources: first, an appropriation of approximately $18 million, and second, the remainder of funds (approximately $48 million) coming from a pool of funding that is designated for Public Health Service evaluation activities.
In FY08, Congress gave ONC level funding of $61 million, due in part to its lack of a strategic plan. That strategic plan is now scheduled to be publicly released at the end of this month, leading some to theorize that the President's budget request may be more well received by Congress. The $66 million request is a departure from previous years, where the President requested much larger increases for ONC, but given Congress's unwillingness to grant the requests, the $66 million figure may have a better chance of being enacted.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) would see an overall reduction in their agency budget of about $9 million. However, AHRQ's health IT portfolio, where the agency helps advance the use of health IT to enhance patient safety, is requested to be funded at the same amount as in FY08, or $45 million.
The federal budget also includes a request for $3 million for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) within HHS for independent evaluations of electronic health record adoption and economic factors influencing health IT. The ASPE health IT request is also the same funding level as FY 2008.
In other areas, the Veterans Affairs Administration (VA) is slated for a significant increase in their health IT budget. Specifically, the budget includes funding to improve the ability of the VA information technology systems to share electronic medical information with the Department of Defense (DoD) for soldiers who are transitioning from the DoD system to the VA. The President's budget proposes an increase in the VA information technology budget of $456 million.
Some HHS programs are also slated for reduction or elimination. Two of those programs come from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) - the Health Professions Grant program and a Rural Health program. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) says of the Health Professions Grants that "evaluations have found these activities do not have a demonstrated impact on the placement of health professionals in underserved areas." Thus, the program would be reduced by $240,000 to a total of $110,000.
For more information on the President's FY09 budget, visit www.budget.gov.
