The ONC states that a new funding source needs to be made available to keep the office fully funded and handling expanding workloads. Who knows what will come out of this as most in Congress and 
even in some areas of government still can’t absorb or understand the cost of IT Infrastructure and all the associated costs that go along with it. The ONC says an additional million is needed so they can keep up with the vendors. Actually they may be the only department in government trying to keep up with IT.
They say the users fees amounting to a million would be used for additional regulation as well but that’s a tough one for me to understand as where do you want to start regulating EMR vendors? I say this because we don’t have equal levels here to actually regulate as the vendor intelligence is a bit above where the ONC is, but they have done a good job since the department opened in catching up on a lot of things, but like anything else their needs are becoming complex. I have to throw this in there again about licensing and taxing data sellers as a huge place to fund the ONC, NIH and FDA and whatever else you want to include…billions in profits made here and you know when you see retail stores like Walgreens making short of $800 million a year and then come back with a user’s fee like this, well they are not going to like it. I’ll keep talking about that nice pot of gold we could tax and help a lot out and perhaps since bitcoin was in the news a lot more will learn about intangible profits and how they work. BD
Time Has Come to License and Tax the Data Sellers of the Web, Companies, Banks, Social Networks..Any One Making a Profit-Latest Microsoft/Google Privacy War Helping the Cause –Consumers Deserve to Know What Is Being Sold and To Who in a Searchable Format
WASHINGTON - The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT just released its budget plan for 2014, which would increase its $61 million budget to $78 million, a 28 percent jump. But it’s a little-reported line item that’s causing a stir among entrepreneurs — a proposal to boost fees for electronic health record vendors.
The ONC is the division within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that leads many initiatives laid out in the Affordable Care Act.
The funding boost in the Obama administration’s proposed budget is a response to the expanding marketplace for health IT. The ONC reports that a new “revenue source” is needed to help it handle the “increasing workload.”
Already, EHR vendors are speculating that a user fee charge is the ONC’s way of assuming regulatory authority. “This would be agency creep,” said Fifield, and urged the FDA, FCC and ONC to come together to clarify their roles.
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