ONC, which has received $61 million annually for the past three years, is slated for $78 million in funding. That does not count the remaining "jump start" funding already allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The office needs a big raise as it has ramped up staffing to handle additional responsibilities under the HITECH Act within ARRA.
AHRQ gets a much bigger boost, from $397 million in 2010 to a requested $611 million in 2011. Much of that increase is stimulus funding, such as $286 million for comparative effectiveness research to develop evidence-based treatment guidelines.
But AHRQ also gets $31.5 million for health IT research, up $3.9 million from 2010 when funding was slashed to $27.6 million. The agency's health I.T. research budget for 2009 was $44.8 million.
The Office for Civil Rights, which among other duties has enforcement jurisdiction over the HIPAA privacy and security rules, is slated for $44 million in 2011, up $3 million from the current fiscal year.
More information on HHS' 2011 budget request is available at hhs.gov/asrt/ob/docbudget/index.html.
--Joseph Goedert
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