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Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

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Overview:

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sponsors research to improve the quality of health care in America. As part of the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ is tasked with elevating health care quality, reducing medical-related costs and expanding healthcare access for more Americans. Almost 80% of AHRQ’s budget is awarded as grants and contracts to researchers at universities and other research institutions across the country. Early in its history, the agency became heavily involved in a controversial healthcare reform plan that almost led to AHRQ being eliminated. Since then, the agency has maintained a low profile, low on controversy.

more
History:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following in the footsteps of the National Center for Health Services Research, the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research (AHPR) was created in 1989 with a ten-year life-span and the directive to “support research designed to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care for all Americans.” During its first years, AHPR attempted to improve medical practice by carrying out large multidisciplinary, multi-institutional projects that focused on patient results in certain medical conditions. The agency eventually abandoned this approach because it proved expensive and had little impact on clinical practice.
 
The agency also tried to address healthcare cost savings by developing practice guidelines for conditions such as low back pain. Some medical professionals were unhappy with the recommendations and criticized AHPR for interfering with the practice of medicine. The agency subsequently dropped the effort. But the agency’s biggest blunder was getting involved in the healthcare reform plan of Bill and Hilary Clinton in the early 1990s. AHPR officials worked closely with the White House on the Clinton’s plan, and Republicans, after taking control of Congress 1994, didn’t forget the agency’s involvement.
 
In 1995, the GOP controlled Congress and considered eliminating AHPR as part of a larger plan to cut government spending. The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research managed to survive the threat, and agency officials came away with a more cautious attitude towards its work thereafter. As one assessment of the agency put it, officials learned the lesson “of avoiding activities that may generate negative political fallout.”
 
In 1999, the agency’s mandate was set to expire. Congress decided to extend AHPR’s existence, but only after some changes were made. Most importantly, its name was altered to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). “Policy” was deliberately removed from the name because of the perception that it would continue to identify the agency with the failed Clinton healthcare reforms. Also, the reauthorization legislation eliminated references to practice guidelines and stated explicitly that the agency was not a regulatory body.

 

Agency for Health Care Policy and Research Studies Own History to Avoid Repeating Past Mistakes (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

 

more
What it Does:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is responsible for supporting research designed to improve the quality of health care, reduce its cost and broaden access to essential services among Americans. AHRQ seeks to inform both healthcare professionals and consumers about research findings, clinical information and data and surveys that lead to an improved understanding of the medical delivery system. Almost 80% of AHRQ’s budget is awarded as grants and contracts to researchers at universities and other research institutions across the country.
 
AHRQ’s primary offices are:
  • Office of Performance Accountability, Resources, and Technology directs and coordinates the agency’s program planning and evaluation activities and administrative operations.
  • Office of Extramural Research, Education and Priority Populations directs the scientific review process for grants and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts. It also manages agency research training programs, evaluates the scientific contribution of proposed and ongoing research, demonstrations and evaluations and supports and conducts health services research on priority populations.
  • Office of Communications and Knowledge Transfer manages programs for disseminating the results of agency research to various groups in the healthcare industry as well to the public.
  • Center for Outcomes and Evidence conducts and supports research and assessment of health care practices, technologies, processes and systems.
  • Center for Primary Care, Prevention, and Clinical Partnerships works to better inform clinical providers and patients about best practices to employ in the area of primary care.
  • Center for Delivery, Organization, and Markets serves as an interdisciplinary team to identify emerging research needs, manage research grants and contracts, conduct and publish peer-reviewed research and develop databases and software tools. These activities often are carried out in collaboration with others in the agency and through partnerships with public and private parties outside of AHRQ.
  • Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends conducts, supports and manages studies of the cost and financing of health care, the access to health care services and related trends. CFACT also develops data sets to support policy and behavioral research and analyses.
  • Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety conducts and supports research on patient safety and health care quality measurement, reporting and improvement. It also disseminates reports and information on health care quality and improvement.
  • National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality is 21-member panel comprised of private-sector experts who share their perspectives on the health care system with agency leaders. The members represent health care plans, providers, purchasers, consumers and researchers. Also serving in an ex-officio capacity are representatives of seven federal agencies that address health care system issues: The National Institutes of Health; Department of Defense (Health Affairs); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Department of Veterans Affairs; the Office of Personnel Management; the Food and Drug Administration; the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; and the Assistant Secretary for Health.

Research Activities Newsletter

 

more
Where Does the Money Go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality spent more than $960 million from 2000 to 2008 on contracts to private companies and public entities, according to USAspending.gov. Of the 619 recipients of AHRQ contracts, the top 10 were:
 
Westat, Inc      
$363,082,579
Social & Scientific Systems
$53,602,531
Research Triangle Institute      
 $43,532,123
Emergency Care Research Institute
 $31,423,379
National Opinion Research Center
 $26,685,066
Thomson Company Inc
 $24,680,365
Oregon Health & Science University
$24,608,949
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
$24,231,318
Hopkins Johns University
$23,497,500
Rand Corporation        
$16,442,390
 
Information about grants awarded by AHRQ is available through the agency’s grants online database. Grants can be researched by a variety of categories: Quality and Outcomes; Use; Cost; Access; Knowledge; or All Categories. Dozens of sub-categories are also available to further refine searches.
 

Additional information on agency

funding announcements

is also available on the Web.

 

more

Comments

Sonja Dillard 12 years ago
I have been denied Social Security Benefits 3 times. I am a 44 year old musician/music teacher. I have worked all of my life until 2007 when I developed a chronic case of Fibromyalgia. It has gotten worse. I can no longer work any type of job and 5 out of 7 days I can't leave the house. Many times am I bed ridden without help during the day. I am married with 3 children. My husband's income is not enough to carry a mortgage, a daughter's college tuition, health care, etc.. I need someone to come in during the day and help me. I was seen and approved disabled by my personal doctor, Dr. Scott Hogenmiller(He said there was nothing else he could do), the Social Security Disability Physician who said I was disabled as well. Their own doctor said I was disabled!! The Social Security field office in Staunton , VA. reversed the decision made by their own doctor to reflect not disabled. If they only knew how much I suffer, crying in pain daily, had a gun up to my head one day, ready to end it all because the pain is unbearable. I am asking your help Dr. Clancy, I just can't wait another 6 months for a judicial hearing. My medical bills are piling up and I can't go to the doctor because I don't have medical insurance. PLEASE HELP ME!!!
thehitmansusan@gmail.com 13 years ago
inapropriate suggestions using the power of suggestion to drive poor people nuts on psychiatric unit 2b logan hospital, meadowbrook. designed to keep up their quota & get more pay or higher status? propaganda in that ie: 1-4 australians will suffer with a mental ill ness by- etc. this is a planned take over by power hungry people. ito orders without purpose & with informing said other partie{s}.

Leave a comment

Founded: 1989
Annual Budget: $334.5 million
Employees: 300
Official Website: http://www.ahrq.gov/
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Bindman, Andrew
Previous Director

Andrew Bindman, a physician who has spent years studying patient quality issues, on May 2, 2016 was named to lead the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

 

Bindman grew up in the Boston area where his father, Arthur, was a psychologist for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. The younger Bindman attended Harvard, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology and social relations in 1980. He then went to New York’s Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, earning his M.D. in 1984.

 

Bindman went to UC San Francisco for his residency and remained there for most of his career. After a post-doctoral fellowship at nearby Stanford, Bindman was named an assistant professor at UCSF. In addition, he has long had an association with San Francisco General Hospital, which serves the city’s poor.

 

Bindman has done several studies on healthcare involving those in poverty. A 1990 study showed how hospital closures hurt the poor more than other patients. He has also investigated the link between access to care and preventable hospitalizations.

 

Bindman was named San Francisco General’s chief of general internal medicine in 1996. Meanwhile, he continued to climb in the UCSF hierarchy, serving as director of UCSF’s Primary Care Research Fellowship, and the developer of a course on translating research into policy. Bindman did take a year away, in 1999 and 2000, to serve as a visiting professor at University College London. He took another sabbatical, from 2009 to 2010, to work as a policy fellow on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he helped draft legislative language for the Affordable Care Act.

 

Beginning in 2006, he was director of the California Medicaid Research Institute, and starting in 2011, he served as a senior adviser to the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Health Policy. From 2014 to 2015, Bindman was a senior advisor to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service. He also was a health policy contributing writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

When Bindman took over AHRQ, he was a UCSF professor of medicine, health policy, epidemiology and biostatistics. He took leave of that job during his tenure as AHRQ director.

 

Bindman met the woman who would become his wife, Rebecca Smith-Bindman, during his residency. She is also a professor at UCSF, with a specialty in radiology and an expertise in

patient safety during radiological exams. They have three adult children: Sarah, Julia and Jacob.

-Steve Straehley

 

To Learn More:

An Interview With Andy Bindman (UC San Francisco) (pdf)

Andrew Bindman Named Director of U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (University of California, San Francisco)

more
Clancy, Carolyn
Former Director
Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy has served as director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality since February 2003. Clancy, a general internist and health services researcher, is a graduate of Boston College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Following clinical training in internal medicine, Clancy was a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond before joining AHRQ in 1990. In addition, Clancy served as chairwoman of Physicians for a National Health Program.
 
Clancy served as director of AHRQ’s Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and later as the agency’s acting director from March 2002 until taking over permanently in 2003. 
 
Clancy holds an academic appointment at George Washington University School of Medicine (clinical associate professor, Department of Medicine) and serves as senior associate editor for Health Services Research. Clancy has served on multiple editorial boards (currently Annals of Family Medicine, American Journal of Medical Quality and Medical Care Research and Review). She has published in peer reviewed journals and has edited or contributed to seven books. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and was elected a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2004.
 
Clancy’s major research interests include various dimensions of health care quality and patient, including women’s health, primary care, access to care services and the impact of financial incentives on physicians’ decisions.
 
 
 
more

Table of Contents
Bookmark and Share
Overview:

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sponsors research to improve the quality of health care in America. As part of the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ is tasked with elevating health care quality, reducing medical-related costs and expanding healthcare access for more Americans. Almost 80% of AHRQ’s budget is awarded as grants and contracts to researchers at universities and other research institutions across the country. Early in its history, the agency became heavily involved in a controversial healthcare reform plan that almost led to AHRQ being eliminated. Since then, the agency has maintained a low profile, low on controversy.

more
History:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following in the footsteps of the National Center for Health Services Research, the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research (AHPR) was created in 1989 with a ten-year life-span and the directive to “support research designed to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care for all Americans.” During its first years, AHPR attempted to improve medical practice by carrying out large multidisciplinary, multi-institutional projects that focused on patient results in certain medical conditions. The agency eventually abandoned this approach because it proved expensive and had little impact on clinical practice.
 
The agency also tried to address healthcare cost savings by developing practice guidelines for conditions such as low back pain. Some medical professionals were unhappy with the recommendations and criticized AHPR for interfering with the practice of medicine. The agency subsequently dropped the effort. But the agency’s biggest blunder was getting involved in the healthcare reform plan of Bill and Hilary Clinton in the early 1990s. AHPR officials worked closely with the White House on the Clinton’s plan, and Republicans, after taking control of Congress 1994, didn’t forget the agency’s involvement.
 
In 1995, the GOP controlled Congress and considered eliminating AHPR as part of a larger plan to cut government spending. The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research managed to survive the threat, and agency officials came away with a more cautious attitude towards its work thereafter. As one assessment of the agency put it, officials learned the lesson “of avoiding activities that may generate negative political fallout.”
 
In 1999, the agency’s mandate was set to expire. Congress decided to extend AHPR’s existence, but only after some changes were made. Most importantly, its name was altered to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). “Policy” was deliberately removed from the name because of the perception that it would continue to identify the agency with the failed Clinton healthcare reforms. Also, the reauthorization legislation eliminated references to practice guidelines and stated explicitly that the agency was not a regulatory body.

 

Agency for Health Care Policy and Research Studies Own History to Avoid Repeating Past Mistakes (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

 

more
What it Does:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is responsible for supporting research designed to improve the quality of health care, reduce its cost and broaden access to essential services among Americans. AHRQ seeks to inform both healthcare professionals and consumers about research findings, clinical information and data and surveys that lead to an improved understanding of the medical delivery system. Almost 80% of AHRQ’s budget is awarded as grants and contracts to researchers at universities and other research institutions across the country.
 
AHRQ’s primary offices are:
  • Office of Performance Accountability, Resources, and Technology directs and coordinates the agency’s program planning and evaluation activities and administrative operations.
  • Office of Extramural Research, Education and Priority Populations directs the scientific review process for grants and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts. It also manages agency research training programs, evaluates the scientific contribution of proposed and ongoing research, demonstrations and evaluations and supports and conducts health services research on priority populations.
  • Office of Communications and Knowledge Transfer manages programs for disseminating the results of agency research to various groups in the healthcare industry as well to the public.
  • Center for Outcomes and Evidence conducts and supports research and assessment of health care practices, technologies, processes and systems.
  • Center for Primary Care, Prevention, and Clinical Partnerships works to better inform clinical providers and patients about best practices to employ in the area of primary care.
  • Center for Delivery, Organization, and Markets serves as an interdisciplinary team to identify emerging research needs, manage research grants and contracts, conduct and publish peer-reviewed research and develop databases and software tools. These activities often are carried out in collaboration with others in the agency and through partnerships with public and private parties outside of AHRQ.
  • Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends conducts, supports and manages studies of the cost and financing of health care, the access to health care services and related trends. CFACT also develops data sets to support policy and behavioral research and analyses.
  • Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety conducts and supports research on patient safety and health care quality measurement, reporting and improvement. It also disseminates reports and information on health care quality and improvement.
  • National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality is 21-member panel comprised of private-sector experts who share their perspectives on the health care system with agency leaders. The members represent health care plans, providers, purchasers, consumers and researchers. Also serving in an ex-officio capacity are representatives of seven federal agencies that address health care system issues: The National Institutes of Health; Department of Defense (Health Affairs); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Department of Veterans Affairs; the Office of Personnel Management; the Food and Drug Administration; the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; and the Assistant Secretary for Health.

Research Activities Newsletter

 

more
Where Does the Money Go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality spent more than $960 million from 2000 to 2008 on contracts to private companies and public entities, according to USAspending.gov. Of the 619 recipients of AHRQ contracts, the top 10 were:
 
Westat, Inc      
$363,082,579
Social & Scientific Systems
$53,602,531
Research Triangle Institute      
 $43,532,123
Emergency Care Research Institute
 $31,423,379
National Opinion Research Center
 $26,685,066
Thomson Company Inc
 $24,680,365
Oregon Health & Science University
$24,608,949
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
$24,231,318
Hopkins Johns University
$23,497,500
Rand Corporation        
$16,442,390
 
Information about grants awarded by AHRQ is available through the agency’s grants online database. Grants can be researched by a variety of categories: Quality and Outcomes; Use; Cost; Access; Knowledge; or All Categories. Dozens of sub-categories are also available to further refine searches.
 

Additional information on agency

funding announcements

is also available on the Web.

 

more

Comments

Sonja Dillard 12 years ago
I have been denied Social Security Benefits 3 times. I am a 44 year old musician/music teacher. I have worked all of my life until 2007 when I developed a chronic case of Fibromyalgia. It has gotten worse. I can no longer work any type of job and 5 out of 7 days I can't leave the house. Many times am I bed ridden without help during the day. I am married with 3 children. My husband's income is not enough to carry a mortgage, a daughter's college tuition, health care, etc.. I need someone to come in during the day and help me. I was seen and approved disabled by my personal doctor, Dr. Scott Hogenmiller(He said there was nothing else he could do), the Social Security Disability Physician who said I was disabled as well. Their own doctor said I was disabled!! The Social Security field office in Staunton , VA. reversed the decision made by their own doctor to reflect not disabled. If they only knew how much I suffer, crying in pain daily, had a gun up to my head one day, ready to end it all because the pain is unbearable. I am asking your help Dr. Clancy, I just can't wait another 6 months for a judicial hearing. My medical bills are piling up and I can't go to the doctor because I don't have medical insurance. PLEASE HELP ME!!!
thehitmansusan@gmail.com 13 years ago
inapropriate suggestions using the power of suggestion to drive poor people nuts on psychiatric unit 2b logan hospital, meadowbrook. designed to keep up their quota & get more pay or higher status? propaganda in that ie: 1-4 australians will suffer with a mental ill ness by- etc. this is a planned take over by power hungry people. ito orders without purpose & with informing said other partie{s}.

Leave a comment

Founded: 1989
Annual Budget: $334.5 million
Employees: 300
Official Website: http://www.ahrq.gov/
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Bindman, Andrew
Previous Director

Andrew Bindman, a physician who has spent years studying patient quality issues, on May 2, 2016 was named to lead the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

 

Bindman grew up in the Boston area where his father, Arthur, was a psychologist for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. The younger Bindman attended Harvard, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology and social relations in 1980. He then went to New York’s Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, earning his M.D. in 1984.

 

Bindman went to UC San Francisco for his residency and remained there for most of his career. After a post-doctoral fellowship at nearby Stanford, Bindman was named an assistant professor at UCSF. In addition, he has long had an association with San Francisco General Hospital, which serves the city’s poor.

 

Bindman has done several studies on healthcare involving those in poverty. A 1990 study showed how hospital closures hurt the poor more than other patients. He has also investigated the link between access to care and preventable hospitalizations.

 

Bindman was named San Francisco General’s chief of general internal medicine in 1996. Meanwhile, he continued to climb in the UCSF hierarchy, serving as director of UCSF’s Primary Care Research Fellowship, and the developer of a course on translating research into policy. Bindman did take a year away, in 1999 and 2000, to serve as a visiting professor at University College London. He took another sabbatical, from 2009 to 2010, to work as a policy fellow on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he helped draft legislative language for the Affordable Care Act.

 

Beginning in 2006, he was director of the California Medicaid Research Institute, and starting in 2011, he served as a senior adviser to the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Health Policy. From 2014 to 2015, Bindman was a senior advisor to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service. He also was a health policy contributing writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

When Bindman took over AHRQ, he was a UCSF professor of medicine, health policy, epidemiology and biostatistics. He took leave of that job during his tenure as AHRQ director.

 

Bindman met the woman who would become his wife, Rebecca Smith-Bindman, during his residency. She is also a professor at UCSF, with a specialty in radiology and an expertise in

patient safety during radiological exams. They have three adult children: Sarah, Julia and Jacob.

-Steve Straehley

 

To Learn More:

An Interview With Andy Bindman (UC San Francisco) (pdf)

Andrew Bindman Named Director of U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (University of California, San Francisco)

more
Clancy, Carolyn
Former Director
Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy has served as director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality since February 2003. Clancy, a general internist and health services researcher, is a graduate of Boston College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Following clinical training in internal medicine, Clancy was a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond before joining AHRQ in 1990. In addition, Clancy served as chairwoman of Physicians for a National Health Program.
 
Clancy served as director of AHRQ’s Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and later as the agency’s acting director from March 2002 until taking over permanently in 2003. 
 
Clancy holds an academic appointment at George Washington University School of Medicine (clinical associate professor, Department of Medicine) and serves as senior associate editor for Health Services Research. Clancy has served on multiple editorial boards (currently Annals of Family Medicine, American Journal of Medical Quality and Medical Care Research and Review). She has published in peer reviewed journals and has edited or contributed to seven books. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and was elected a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2004.
 
Clancy’s major research interests include various dimensions of health care quality and patient, including women’s health, primary care, access to care services and the impact of financial incentives on physicians’ decisions.
 
 
 
more

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