Obama budget calls for more funding for ONC, comparative effectiveness

February 8, 2010 — 2:08pm ET | By Neil Versel

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology would get a $17 million funding boost, to a total of $78 million, under the Obama administration's budget proposal for fiscal year 2011. This includes $4 million for ONC to "to identify consumer perspectives on consumer e-health tools and the development of patient decision aids; anticipate and mitigate unintended consequences of the electronic exchange of health information; and support state governments as they implement their HITECH grants," InformationWeek reports.

In total, the White House is asking Congress for $110 million in funding to bolster health IT policy coordination and research across federal agencies as part of an $81.3 billion budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services. Other proposed HHS funding for health IT includes $32 million for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for patient safety initiatives, $1.6 million in the Office for Civil Rights to establish "regional privacy advisors" and $1 million "for independent evaluation of EHR adoption and economic factors influencing health IT" within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

Also included in the proposed HHS budget is an additional $286 million for comparative effectiveness research, on top of the $1.1 billion allocated over three years as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Obama signed into law a year ago next week.

Meanwhile, the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs stand to receive $2.8 billion for health IT next fiscal year under the proposed federal budget.

For more:
- read this Healthcare IT News story
- see InformationWeek's take on this news
- check out this NextGov piece on DoD and VA health IT funding
- have a look at this Computerworld article on general federal health IT spending