ONC, Meaningful Use Incentive Payments
Under the proposal, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's administrative budget would increase to $57 million from $42 million in 2010 (Daly/Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 2/14).According to HHS, ONC would receive additional funding from other sources, and its total budget would be $78.4 million in 2012, up from $60.5 million in 2010.
Meanwhile, the budget proposal anticipates that CMS will dole out $2.8 billion in Medicare meaningful use incentive payments in 2012, compared with $640 million this year. CMS also is expected to provide $854 million to states next year to administer Medicaid incentive payments, compared with $1.6 billion in 2011.
Under the 2009 economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records can qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 2/15).
Other Health Care-Related Increases
Under Obama's budget proposal:- Spending to help curb health care fraud and abuse would increase to $581 million from $311 million, and the administration would require state Medicaid agencies to track and monitor indicators of fraud (Modern Healthcare, 2/14);
- Spending for USDA's IT programs would increase to about $406 million, compared with $404 million expected this year (Khan, Federal Computer Week, 2/14);
- HHS would receive nearly $80 billion to administer its discretionary programs and implement the federal health reform law, though the figure is $1.3 billion lower than the agency's current funding levels ("It's All Politics," NPR, 2/14);
- NIH would receive $32.3 billion, up from $31.3 billion in FY 2011 (Millman, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 2/14);
- CDC would receive $11.2 billion, up from its fiscal year 2010 budget of $10.8 billion, though the agency's discretionary spending budget would be reduced from $6.5 billion to $5.9 billion (Brown, "44", Washington Post, 2/14); and
- FDA would receive $2.7 billion, an increase of about $1 billion from the agency's current fiscal year budget ("It's All Politics," NPR, 2/14).
Spending Decreases
Even though Obama's budget would increase overall IT spending, some agencies would see decreases in their IT budgets (InformationWeek, 2/14).For example, the IT budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs is 4.5% -- or $146 million -- below the $3.3 billion allocated in 2010 (Brewin, NextGov, 2/14).
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