Stakeholder Letter to Appropriators in Support of ONC Funding

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May 21, 2024

Dear Chair Baldwin, Ranking Member Capito, Chair Aderholt, and Ranking Member DeLauro:

Thank you for your leadership and commitment to our nation’s healthcare system transformation journey enabling equitable access to high quality care. As we continue our work to advance information sharing and interoperability through health information technology, the undersigned organizations request you fund the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) at no less than $86 million, the President’s FY2025 budget request. As the lead agency for health information technology advancement and cross-agency coordination, ONC continues to be a key partner to public and private sector stakeholders to advance the digital health ecosystem. This $17 million increase in funding for ONC would better reflect their growing responsibilities and provide them with additional necessary resources to help achieve nationwide, standards-based health information exchange to support better health enabled by data.

Since 2004, ONC has largely operated at the same annual funding levels despite being entrusted by Congress with new and resource-intensive authorities and responsibilities through legislation, including the HITECH Act, 21st Century Cures Act, and MACRA. The passage of the HITECH Act of 2009, which propelled our nation’s healthcare system into the 21st Century, rapidly accelerated our ability to exchange healthcare records and data to support healthcare delivery and improve patient outcomes. Throughout this transformation, ONC has been a convener for health IT activities across federal agencies, states, and healthcare sector stakeholders, supporting a wide array of initiatives aimed at advancing national goals for better, safer, and more equitable healthcare through a nationwide interoperable health IT infrastructure.

Fully funding ONC will allow them to continue their critical work to support a more innovative and data-driven healthcare ecosystem that empowers and protects patients, improves care delivery and provider experience, accelerates research and innovation, and advances health IT capabilities and infrastructure.

In support of these goals, ONC’s initiatives focus on advancing interoperability and information sharing and exchange, coordinating federal and state-level digital health transformation, supporting the modernization of the U.S. public health data infrastructure, while successfully fulfilling the many requirements outlined in the lengthening number of laws enacted since 2004 (i.e. MIPPA, HITECH, MACRA, 21st Century Cures, etc.). Without the much-needed funding boost, we fear that ONC will be hard-pressed to successfully execute the many agency initiatives, and priorities of Congress and the Administration.

ONC plays a leading role in creating a culture of learning around information sharing to ensure that health data is flowing across the entire ecosystem in support of the goals of the 21st Century Cures Act. As the healthcare sector forges ahead toward ubiquitous sharing of information and enabling patient's facile access to their data, and operating under information blocking regulations, ONC has continued their engagement with the stakeholder community on implementation of the critical regulations. Going forward, ONC will continue to be a critical enabler of our health system transformation. ONC will play a key role in helping industry navigate advancements in technology (e.g. artificial intelligence and other predictive algorithms) that have the potential to revolutionize healthcare to benefit patients and providers.

In order to help account for rising costs in salaries, increased costs associated with technology investments, and growing operational and administrative functions we also believe that at a minimum ONC’s budget should be adjusted for inflation annually. Such a policy will help alleviate the growing strain placed on ONCs already limited resources.

Our organizations fully support ONC’s mission to promote the adoption of health IT and use of health information to enhance the health and well-being of every American, and we thank you for your consideration of this important funding request. If you have any questions, please contact David Gray at [email protected] .