Blog excerpt: AHRQ teeters on brink of extinction

Editor’s note: My colleague Tinker Ready with HealthLeaders Media recently wrote an article about the possible dissolution of the AHRQ, approved by a congressional subcommittee in June, that I thought you might find interesting.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) says its mission “is to produce evidence to make healthcare safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable.” But that mission may soon be over.

This column was slated to be titled “Ten things you don’t know about the AHRQ.” But, in reality, there are probably a lot more than ten things you don’t about the agency, including its name: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

A congressional subcommittee wrote the agency out of the 2016 Health and Human Services budget in June, and the full committee approved the plan on June 24. Despite lobbying efforts by health service researchers and their supporter, the future of AHRQ, pronounced “ARK” by those in the know, is uncertain.
 
Read the full blog post here.