When Congress returns from its summer recess next week, it will have the spending bill that includes the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on its plate, along with 11 other spending bills.
All the bills are supposed to be passed before the 2008 fiscal year begins Oct. 1, so it will be a busy period on Capitol Hill.
The House passed its version of the Health and Human Services Department appropriations bill (which includes ONC, and also covers the Education and Labor departments) July 11, but the Senate has yet to act. The Senate Appropriations Committee sent its bill to the full Senate June 21.
President Bush’s proposed budget for the coming year calls for spending $117.9 million on health IT, up sharply from this year’s $61.3 million. However, neither house of Congress seems ready to fund ONC at that level.
The House bill would hold 2008 spending at this year’s level, while the Senate Appropriations Committee bill would increase it to $71 million, about $10 million more than this year.
The House Appropriations Committee said in its report on the bill that it did not increase spending on health information technologybecause of concerns that ONC “has yet to develop a detailed and integrated implementation plan for achieving the health information technology program’s strategic goals, as recommended" by the Government Accountability Office. The committee asked HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt to provide a strategic plan by March 1, 2008.
The committee also asked for a “privacy and security framework that will establish trust among consumers and users of electronic personal health information and will govern all efforts to advance electronic health information exchange.” The committee report specified elements it wants to see in the framework, such as “allowing individuals to have a say in who and how their information is used” and maintaining data integrity.
By June 30, 2008, the committee wants HHS to report not only on the framework but also on how its provisions will be enforced. “The committee requests that the [HHS] secretary issue, after an appropriate public comment and review period, such rules, regulations and technical requirements as may be needed to assure implementation of the privacy and security framework, consistent with the report to Congress,” the report stated.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s bill contains no such language.
If the Senate passes a bill calling for more or less ONC spending than the House bill provides, the two houses will have to negotiate a compromise in a conference committee.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
