Grant Details

The AHRQ mission is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more ac­cessible, equitable and affordable, and to work with HHS and other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used. Within the mission, AHRQ's specific priority areas of focus are:

• Research to improve health care patient safety.
• Harnessing data and technology to improve health care quality and patient outcomes and to provide a 360-degree view of the patient.
• Research to increase accessibility and affordability of health care by examining innovative market approaches to care delivery and financing.

Research to Improve Health Care Patient Safety

Patient safety is defined as the freedom from accidental or preventable injury produced by health care as well as the practices that create a safe environment of care. The ultimate goal of AHRQ-supported Patient Safety research is to improve the safety of health care delivery. Patient safety research initiatives that lead to this goal can be considered in three different stages:

• Identification of risks, hazards, and patient harm.
• Design, implementation, dissemination and spread, and evaluation of interventions to improve patient safety.
• Establishment of strategies to sustain patient safety improvements such as just culture, incident/event reporting, measurement, monitoring, and surveillance.

Projects may address important topics such as: the surveillance, measurement, detection, and reporting of patient safety events; the impact of human performance, work flow, and working conditions on patient safety; the patients' role and contribution to patient safety; health care safety culture, leadership, communication, teamwork, and simulation; prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs); diagnostic safety and quality; the safe use of medical devices and medications, including safely prescribing opioids; the role of Patient Safety Organizations; and the challenges inherent in transitions of care in the same setting and between settings and handoffs between health care providers.

Harnessing Data and Technology To Improve Health Care Quality and Patient Outcomes and To Provide a 360-Degree View of the Patient

AHRQ is interested in research to: advance the methods of evidence synthesis to ensure scientific rigor and unbiased reviews, make evidence-based recommendations on clinical preventive services, conduct research on how health information technology can improve the quality of health care, advance the science of clinical practice improvement, evaluate and support innovative models of practice transformation in primary care and other ambulatory settings, and facilitate communities of learning to promote the implementation of evidence for practice improvement. Further, AHRQ is interested in studying and improving upon the process by which health systems and ambulatory care practices select evidence to implement and how to determine what strategies are used to implement the evidence into everyday practice. 

Research to Increase Accessibility and Affordability of Health Care by Examining Innovative Market Approaches to Care Delivery and Financing

Introducing evidence that can be used to increase the affordability and efficiency of health care for all Americans is a major AHRQ priority. Potential research areas and questions include but are not limited to the following:

• Reducing Cost Growth: In order to make health care more affordable, we must understand the drivers of those costs and their growth, as well as the relationship between cost and quality.
• Comparing Performance of Systems and Providers: AHRQ is interested in research that will allow comparison of delivery system and provider performance by health care stakeholders such as consumers, providers, payers, insurers, and policymakers.
• Incentives for Improving Performance: Public and private payers have provided a variety of financial and nonfinancial incentives to improve the performance of health care providers and systems. AHRQ is interested in research on the impacts of these changes—both intended and otherwise—as well as how to improve incentive programs.
• Interventions to Improve Performance: While alignment with external incentives is very important, it is the provider or system that implements interventions to increase performance. AHRQ is interested in research on how interventions to improve quality or cost are best implemented within and spread across providers and systems.

AHRQ's Interests in Comparative Effectiveness Research

AHRQ informs the research community of priorities for comparative effectiveness research (CER). CER is research that compares and evaluates the benefits and risks of two or more health care options. CER projects that seek to compare different ways of organizing and delivering health care are a priority for AHRQ. These studies may consider health outcomes, patient and family experience, staff satisfaction, and health care utilization among other research outcomes. CER proposals that seek to compare the clinical effectiveness of specific medications and treatments, diagnostic tools, technologies, procedures, surgeries and other specific preventive, diagnostic, or therapeutic services are not a priority of AHRQ.