The recent $388 billion omnibus appropriation bill did not include the $50 million President Bush had requested to support information technology projects of the seven-month-old Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT).
According to Modern Physician, the appropriation bill did contain $4 million for the office's operations and possibly limited grant funding for IT projects next year. Another $50 million in the bill will go to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for its IT projects. That agency in October awarded the State of Tennessee and the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health a $5 million grant to implement a regional data exchange in Southwest Tennessee.
The ONCHIT is headed by Dr. David Brailer and this year was funded out of the budget of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, whose budget may include some money for ONCHIT's operations again next year, according to Modern Physician.
In May, President Bush and Brailer visited Vanderbilt University Medical Center to discuss plans to create electronic medical records for all patients and standardized health care terminology in U.S. hospitals.