October 6, 2001
Subcommittee recommends more funds for specialty
Family medicine and other primary care training programs received good news Wednesday when a key congressional subcommittee recommended increasing their funds by $4 million more than last year.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education said the fiscal year 2002 funds should rise to $95 million, an increase of 4.4 percent over FY 2001. The funds would go to programs covered under Section 747 of Title VII of the Public Health Service Act. This section includes family medicine training programs and those for general pediatrics, general internal medicine, physician assistants and dentistry.
Also, the subcommittee voted for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to receive $269.7 million to continue its practice-oriented research on primary care -- a 13.5 percent increase over this year's funding.
The subcommittee recommended that the National Health Service Corps should receive $129.4 million -- 10 percent more than this year's funding. The corps places primary care physicians, dentists and midlevel providers in areas needing health care professionals.
The full House Committee on Appropriations is expected to vote on the subcommittee's recommendations soon.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2001 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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