HHS updates CER spending plans

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius does not plan to spend any of the $400 million appropriated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for comparative effectiveness research (CER) during FY09, according to agency spokesperson Nicholas Papas. Sebelius will now have until Nov. 1 to submit her plan for FY10 to Congress. Both NIH and HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) submitted their spending plans for FY09-10 late last week.

AHRQ, which received $300 million under ARRA, plans to spend $50 million in FY09 to review and synthesize existing CER and identify needs for future research. In FY10, the agency plans to spend $100 million in up to 10 awards for clinical studies to measure the benefit of treatments given in routine clinical practice, within a "real-world" setting. An additional $48 million in FY10 will go toward creating or enhancing disease registries, and $24 million will go to support the DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions about Effectiveness) Network of clinical research centers. DEcIDE will be tasked with researching methods for conducting comparative effectiveness research. All of AHRQ's efforts will focus on the 14 priority health conditions established by the Secretary of HHS under Section 1013 of the Medicare Modernization Act. ...