A small federal agency responsible for studying how health care works for patients is largely dormant despite receiving millions of dollars from Congress for research into antibiotic resistance, health care access and safety or quality of care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has spent none of the $345 million appropriated by Congress for the current fiscal year, and $80 million of\u00a0its fiscal 2025 funding was sent back to the Treasury.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AHRQ hasn\u2019t funded any new research projects in almost a year, and it hasn\u2019t issued grant funding for existing projects since before the end of the previous fiscal year in September, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
That\u00a0has left the\u00a0agency, created in 1999\u00a0to fund research into how health care delivery can be safer and better for patients, in limbo as\u00a0the Trump administration signals its desire to reduce its funding or transfer its functions elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn practice, the agency has stopped functioning,\u201d said Aaron Carroll, president of AcademyHealth, a professional organization for researchers who study health services, including projects that had been funded by AHRQ.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Much of the\u00a0staff left through\u00a0reductions in force or layoffs\u00a0last year, including all employees who process grants, the sources say.\u00a0About 90 employees remain\u00a0at the agency which once employed 300 people.<\/p>\n
Researchers who were awarded grants have been unable to reach staff and at times have been given incorrect information or told they should withdraw their proposals and submit them somewhere else. Still, researchers haven\u2019t received termination notices or received information about when or if they might get funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only has that money not come, if you call them, nobody answers the phone. Nobody replies when you email them,\u201d said Ronald Ackerman, the senior associate dean for public health and director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern.<\/p>\n
Grants are typically awarded for five years, with funding released annually as researchers report progress and demonstrate they are meeting milestones. Program officers usually review those reports and provide guidance between funding periods.<\/p>\n
Researchers have essentially been abandoned by the agency in the middle of their projects.<\/p>\n
Five grants in Ackerman\u2019s institute haven\u2019t received funding in a year. They include studies related to reducing unnecessary antibiotic use, which can be dangerous for patients; the role of telehealth in improving access to care for Medicaid patients; and better care for acute low-back pain.<\/p>\n
\u2018Black hole\u2019<\/p>\n
AHRQ Director Roger Klein, who was appointed last summer, has not issued directives to staff about the work the agency should be funding\u00a0and frequently denigrates existing projects as \u201cworthless,\u201d according to a former employee who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution.<\/p>\n
Klein has insisted on reviewing every public facing communication, report and presentation, however most submissions seem to go into a \u201cblack hole,\u201d\u00a0the former employee said. They either aren\u2019t released publicly or employee\u00a0requests\u00a0about them aren\u2019t responded to, effectively muzzling the agency.<\/p>\n
As a result, at the end of fiscal 2025, the agency had to give a significant portion of its congressionally approved funding back to the Treasury, the person said.<\/p>\n
AHRQ has canceled funding notices \u2014 announcements asking researchers to apply for funding to study certain topics \u2014 including several related to antibiotic resistance and hospital-acquired infections.<\/p>\n
And panels that are supposed to meet several times a year to determine which applications should be funded have not met in a year, according to the agency\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you were willing to roll the dice and assume that AHRQ will at some point do something, you literally cannot submit to the agency. It is not possible to request funds from the agency,\u201d\u00a0said Dr. Leora Horwitz, a researcher who received AHRQ funding in the past.<\/p>\n
Agency history<\/p>\n
AHRQ is the only federal agency focused solely on studying how to improve health care delivery in the U.S.<\/p>\n
It has supported research on infections acquired in health care settings, finding\u00a0that central-line infections, which affect catheters inserted into the bloodstream,\u00a0could be prevented using checklists and safety practices such as hand hygiene. The agency then helped scale those practices nationwide, contributing to a significant reduction in infections and reducing health care costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one study paid for AHRQ forever, basically,\u201d Horwitz said.<\/p>\n
While the National Institutes of Health funds research into cures, this agency focuses on how to get those treatments to people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no perfect health care system right now. AHRQ\u2019s externally funded research program aims to fix that,\u201d Horwitz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officials at the Health and Human Services Department say the agency is reprioritizing its mission.<\/p>\n
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon blamed the delay in issuing fiscal 2026 funds on the \u201cDemocratic-led shutdown along with the late passage of the minibus,\u201d in reference to the votes to fund the department in late January and early February.<\/p>\n
Asked why no new grants have been issued in one year, Nixon said in an email that \u201cefforts have been focused on the reorientation toward Presidential and Secretarial priorities, and a return to AHRQ\u2019s core statutory mission of improving health outcomes for the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that AHRQ will \u201chire staff as needed and award new grants in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
HHS\u2019 fiscal 2027 budget request, however,\u00a0proposes eliminating one-third of the agency\u2019s funding, stating that \u201cmuch of AHRQ\u2019s research on quality, safety, and affordability of healthcare delivery is wasteful or duplicative of research conducted at NIH\u201d and that it has \u201cpushed radical gender ideology onto children.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the descriptions of Klein\u2019s handling of operations, Nixon said the\u00a0claims \u201care based on anonymous sources and don\u2019t reflect the reality of what\u2019s happening at AHRQ. Dr. Klein is focused on ensuring the agency\u2019s work is aligned with its core mission and delivers meaningful value,\u201d as well as strengthening oversight of projects.<\/p>\n
The fiscal 2026 budget request\u00a0proposed moving the agency\u2019s functions into a newly created \u201cOffice of Strategy,\u201d as part of a massive reorganization of the department.<\/p>\n
Congress rejected\u00a0such a reorganization and instead funded the agency at $345 million, a 6.4 percent decrease from the prior fiscal year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAHRQ has been explicitly tasked by Congress to generate trustworthy research on how to deliver the highest quality healthcare at the lowest cost,\u201d Rep. Donald S. Beyer Jr., D-Va., who has been pushing for answers and funding, said in a statement. \u201cIt is unthinkable to deliberately undermine an agency that improves healthcare delivery for Americans and ensures that taxpayer dollars are spent on effective, affordable, and safe care. This Administration\u2019s attacks on AHRQ are illegal and are in clear defiance of lawful appropriations from Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fiscal 2026 funding law also included language for the first time that HHS needs to \u201csupport staffing levels necessary to fulfill its statutory responsibilities,\u201d a direct shot at the administration\u2019s reductions in force that crippled agencies like AHRQ and others.<\/p>\n
Still, onlookers haven\u2019t seen evidence the agency is hiring staff to comply with the directive.<\/p>\n
Legal action<\/p>\n
In a lawsuit seeking to compel the agency to release funding, medical research organizations say AHRQ\u00a0had to enlist the help of Food and Drug Administration employees to push funding out the door for research that had already been approved.<\/p>\n
The administration argues, though,\u00a0that statute doesn\u2019t actually require AHRQ to issue grants or review every application it receives, and that the appropriations are a \u201clump-sum that could be used for any purpose in furtherance of AHRQ\u2019s mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government seeks to have the lawsuit thrown out on the grounds that the plaintiffs \u2014 the Society of General Internal Medicine and the North American Primary Care Research Group \u2014 don\u2019t have standing to sue.<\/p>\n
The Government Accountability Office separately is investigating whether AHRQ\u2019s actions qualify as an impoundment of funds, the withholding or delaying of federal funds appropriated by Congress. A report on that is expected in the coming months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are still hearing every week from folks who have had to shut down their labs and let go of support staff and are waiting on even an answer from the agency on whether or not their work can continue,\u201d said Stephanie Garlock, an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group representing the medical societies in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A small federal agency responsible for studying how health care works for patients is largely dormant despite receiving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[19129,251462,9069,251463,82250,150,1340,10473,123039,35038,1070,13962,299,10474,97,32812,252,253,473,58080,2932,1341,6377,18501,2316,3479,5148],"class_list":{"0":"post-570236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-agency","9":"tag-agency-for-healthcare-research-and-quality","10":"tag-american","11":"tag-appropriations","12":"tag-brand-safety","13":"tag-budget","14":"tag-congress","15":"tag-department-of-health-and-human-services","16":"tag-department-of-the-treasury","17":"tag-department-of-veterans-affairs","18":"tag-elections","19":"tag-executive-branch","20":"tag-food","21":"tag-food-and-drug-administration","22":"tag-health","23":"tag-health-and-human-services","24":"tag-health-care","25":"tag-healthcare","26":"tag-history","27":"tag-human-services","28":"tag-lawsuit","29":"tag-medicaid","30":"tag-national","31":"tag-national-institutes-of-health","32":"tag-summer","33":"tag-trump","34":"tag-virginia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}