The Hanford Health Information Network may have met the budget problems that will doom the agency, after repeatedly finding money to keep it alive in recent years.

It's ending December with a shortfall of about $306,000 - money it says the Department of Energy owes the network. However, DOE's Richland office says the network already has the full $900,000 it agreed to provide for fiscal year 1999.

"We're on very thin ice with funding now,"said Dr. Sandy Rock, acting state coordinator for the agency.

The network, formed in 1991, depends on federal money to offer information to people who may have been exposed to radiation releases from Hanford from 1944 to 1972.

According to an information sheet developed by the network for advisory group members, "HHIN services will be suspended after Dec. 31 unless $300,000 in immediate stopgap funding is provided."

It's notified subagencies, such as network offices in Oregon and Idaho, that they should proceed at their own risk after Friday because HHIN may not have money to pay their expenses. One of those, a resource center in Seattle to offer information to those living outside the Northwest, is expected to suspend services at the end of the month.

Another, the Hanford Health Information Archives in Spokane, is likely to be converted to a private, nonprofit enterprise, said Jeff Camp, a member of the network's Washington advisory board.

However, in Washington, the network plans to continue to pay its six employees but is notifying them their hours will be cut in about half for the time being. Services will be limited, but Washington phone lines, for example, should remain open. The network has offices in Seattle and Yakima.

Even such makeshift measures to keep the network staff intact in Washington through February will depend on receiving more money from the federal government. The network is asking the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry for $300,000.

Camp said ATSDR appears to want to keep the network intact, and he's optimistic it will come up with the money.

However, the agency still will need to find more money. An additional $850,000 is needed to allow the network to offer a full range of services through June.

The network has a convoluted funding history, but for fiscal year 2000, it expected money to come from DOE and be funneled through the toxic substances agency. However, on Dec. 15, network officials learned the agency had not received any DOE money for the network for 2000.

"Furthermore, we have indications that efforts to obtain these funds may be very difficult since, due to numerous budget commitments, (DOE headquarters) is cutting programs,"according to the network's information sheet.

If this is the end for the network, it would like at least six months to shut down, Camp said. That could allow the network to publish a final series of documents and newsletters, wrap up programs and notify people it has served that the agency will be closed.

It already has one newsletter ready to send to a mailing list of 46,000 and another in the works. Other services include toll-free information numbers, recording and transcribing oral histories and outreach to health care professionals and the public.

"I knew this would happen eventually,"Camp said. "We've had the budget carrot dangled in front of us for two years."

The network was planned as a three-year, $5-million program in 1991, said Melanie Fletcher, contract officer for DOE in Richland. But network officials said studies that would give answers to people potentially exposed to radiation have been slow to be completed.

The Richland DOE office has funneled $12.7 million to the agency in DOE headquarters money in eight years.

However, there has been concern about large budget carryovers, Fletcher said. For fiscal year 1999, HHIN was told to use $750,000 in unspent money from the DOE, and the Richland office added $150,000 of new money from its own budget.

DOE maintains the network received that money and spent most of it, but the network maintains DOE shorted it.

"It appears to us it was a misunderstanding as far as the bottom line goes,"Fletcher said.