NIH finance lines would cause $ 100 million loss on some campuses

Top universities and medical centers lose $ 100 million a year or more as a major change in the way in which the National Institutes of Health Resecents Research costs come into effect on Monday. The great losers would include prestigious institutions in conservative states.

Nih, the best financier of the nation of biomedical research, announced on Friday that it would start almost immediately, administrative and facility costs that are considerably limited for indirect costs, administrative and facility costs that are related to research. To assess the potential impact of these changes, Stat investigated publicly available financial data, agreements that are negotiated between research centers and the federal government and internal e -mails. These documents show that, in some cases, the policy change could collapse the operational budgets, so that academic leaders climb to find out how they can manage the loss.

Research managers, scientists and academic clinics interviewed by Stat were shocked after the NIH announced the policy change, with many who are afraid that the loss of income could quickly lead to dismissals, stopped or canceled studies and clinical studies, and and clinical investigations, and Even the collapse of biomedical discovery in the United States along the line.

“If this comes into action on Monday, it actually has the ability to stop and grind research – soon,” said Robert Winn, the director of the Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University. “How does an institution now climb out of a hole of millions of dollars? Tens of millions. How does that just happen at night? “

The policy change is all about the indirect cost payments that federal beneficiaries receive from the government. These costs are also called facilities and administration costs or F&A costs, because they cover the general maintenance of the running of an research institution with electricity and other utilities, concierge, rent and certain administrative costs. Institutions negotiate directly on an indirect cost rate with the provision of agencies, an intensive process that requires the institution to provide controlled financial documentation of their overhead costs.

These rates vary greatly from the previous minimum of 15% to around 70%. A rate of 70% means that direct financing receives a scientist from a subsidy for each dollar, the research institution receives 70 cents in indirect funds. The new policy covers the indirect rate of NIH subsidies at 15% -a change that, according to experts, will not only harm elite institutions, which often get the highest percentages of overhead support, but will have a permanent impact on almost any academic and medical institution in the country with a research budget.