February 3, 2010

President Releases FY 2011 Budget

The President released his FY 2011 budget request on February 1, which is available online at: whitehouse.gov/omb and gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/index.html#appendix.

Health services research and health data fare very well, with the President requesting $611 million for FY 2011 the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; a $214 million (54 percent) increase over FY 2010. The President’s request also includes $162 million for National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS); a $23 million (17 percent) increase over FY 2010.

This requested increase for AHRQ is targeted for “patient-centered health research” or comparative effectiveness research (CER), folding into the base most of the funding AHRQ received for this research through ARRA.

Specifically, the budget provides:

• $286 million for CER (+261 million over FY 2010). This includes $13 million for “program support” and $116 million for 138 research grants, of which 105 are “new and competing grants” for investigator initiated research. 
• $32 million for HIT research (+4 million).
• $65 million for patient safety research (-$26 million). This includes $34 million for healthcare-associated infections including MRSA. It does not include $25 million for medical liability demos provided in FY 2010.
• $90 million ($21 million decrease) for cross-cutting research and dissemination activities aimed at improving quality, safety, and efficiency, including a $2 million increase for the HCUP data.
• $4 million for activities aimed at increasing the value of health care.
• $16 million for research and dissemination activities in prevention and care management.
• $59 million for MEPS.

The NCHS budget request includes increased support for the National Health Interview Survey, the Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, and the National Vital Statistics System. These increases will help the CDC improve its ability to monitor trends on critical health measures, monitor characteristics of health providers, and increase electronic reporting of birth and death records.

Also of note is a requested $110 million for CMS to implement a new, Health Care Data Improvement Initiative that would “transform CMS’ data environment from one focused primarily on claims processing to one focused on state-of-the-art data analysis and information sharing.” This initiative would make CMS’ data more easily accessible and useful to researchers.

A funding chart tracking the federal funding of health services research at these and other federal agencies is available at http://www.chsr.org/fundingchart.htm.