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AHRQ at 20

AHRQ at 20: AHRQ in 20 logo, 1999-2019

Over the past 20 years, AHRQ has served a unique and valuable role in efforts to produce evidence and make healthcare safer, higher quality, more accessible, and affordable.

 

HHS Leaders Laud AHRQ's Accomplishments

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Celebrating AHRQ at 20

Former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar congratulates AHRQ on 20 years of service improving the American healthcare system through patient safety research. (2 minutes, 26 seconds)
 
Alternative Audio-Described Version (2 minutes, 26 seconds)

AHRQ's 20th Anniversary – Director's Message

Former AHRQ Director Gopal Khanna congratulates AHRQ staff members on 20 years of service, describes the Agency’s accomplishments, and presents his vision for the future of patient safety and systems research. (4 minutes, 9 seconds)
 
Alternative Audio-Described Version (4 minutes, 9 seconds)

Timeline

  • 1999
    • Congress passes the Healthcare Research and Quality Act.
      Sponsored by Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), with support from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Reps. Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), signed into law by President Clinton. Established AHRQ as the lead Federal agency on healthcare quality and safety research, and revised the Agency’s name (formally the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research).
  • 2000
    • AHRQ releases the brochure Staying Healthy at 50+.
      The brochure is the result of a public-private partnership among AHRQ, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and AARP. The publication comes from the research-based recommendations of the AHRQ-supported U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. This brochure was later updated for Men and Women in 2014.
  • 2001
    • AHRQ publishes the evidence report Making Healthcare Safer: A Critical Analysis of Patient Safety Practices.
      The report lists 73 patient safety practices that are likely to improve patient safety and describes 11 that the researchers considered highly proven to work but are not performed routinely in the Nation's hospitals and nursing homes.
  • 2002
    • MEPS data provide first nationally representative information about parents’ experiences with healthcare for their children.
      Data from a new questionnaire added to AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey indicate that while the majority of parents report that their experiences with healthcare for their children are good, there are significant variations by age, race/ethnicity and type of insurance coverage – the first national nationally representative information about parents’ experiences with healthcare for their children.
  • 2003
    • The National Healthcare Quality Report and The National Healthcare Disparities Report are released.
      AHRQ releases two reports that represent the first comprehensive effort to measure the quality of healthcare in America and differences in access to healthcare services for priority populations: the National Healthcare Quality Report and the National Healthcare Disparities Report.
  • 2004
    • AHRQ releases the Electronic Preventive Services Selector.
      AHRQ unveils a second clinical decision-support tool for personal digital assistants, the Electronic Preventive Services Selector, to help clinicians quickly search for which preventive services to provide based on patients’ age and gender
  • 2005
    • AHRQ initiates the AHRQ Patient Safety Network.
      The Agency creates the AHRQ Patient Safety Network, a one-stop, online portal for patient safety information. Healthcare providers, researchers, administrators, and consumers can access this resource to learn about the latest news, research findings and publications, pertinent legislation, conferences, and tools related to patient safety
  • 2006
    • AHRQ releases TeamSTEPPS®.
      AHRQ and the Department of Defense’s Military Health System jointly release TeamSTEPPS® (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety). Adapted from procedures that were originally developed, tested, and refined for flight crews, the team-training curriculum provides healthcare organizations with evidence-based training techniques for effective communication and team building.
  • 2007
  • 2008
    • AHRQ promotes Project RED.
      To help hospitals redesign the discharge process and curtail costly and unnecessary readmissions, AHRQ promotes the “Re-Engineered Hospital Discharge Program,” or Project RED. The program features a personalized instruction booklet and instructions for nurses to help patients understand after-hospital care instructions, including how to take medications and when to make follow-up appointments.
  • 2009
  • 2010
    • AHRQ awards American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants and contracts.
      AHRQ awards $473 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants and contracts to support projects that will help people make healthcare decisions based on the best evidence of effectiveness.
  • 2011
    • AHRQ-funded Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) is successful in Michigan.
      Using the AHRQ-funded Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP), hospital staff in Michigan intensive care units cut by more than 70 percent the rate of pneumonia in patients on ventilators. Similarly, Michigan hospitals’ ICUs stopped central line-associated bloodstream infections for up to 2 years. Researchers found that 60 percent of the 80 ICUs evaluated went 1 year or more without an infection, and 26 percent achieved 2 years or more.
  • 2012
    • AHRQ publishes the AHRQ Quality Indicators™ Toolkit for Hospitals.
      The toolkit helps guide hospitals that use Inpatient Quality Indicators and Patient Safety Indicators to improve care.
  • 2013
    • AHRQ patient safety programs reduce CLABSI in participating neonatal intensive care units.
      Central line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) in newborns were reduced by 58 percent in less than a year in hospital neonatal intensive care units participating in an AHRQ patient safety program. Frontline caregivers in 100 NICUs in nine states relied on the program's prevention practice checklists and better communication to prevent an estimated 131 infections and up to 41 deaths and to avoid more than $2 million in healthcare costs.
  • 2014
    • AHRQ report Annual Hospital-Acquired Condition Rate and Estimates of Cost Savings and Deaths Averted From 2010 to 2013 reflects marked improvements.
      The AHRQ report 2013 Annual Hospital-Acquired Condition Rate and Estimates of Cost Savings and Deaths Averted From 2010 to 2013 shows an estimated 50,000 fewer patients died in hospitals and approximately $12 billion in healthcare costs were saved as a result of a reduction in hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2013. The efforts were due in part to provisions of the Affordable Care Act such as Medicare payment incentives to improve the quality of care and the HHS Partnership for Patients initiative.
  • 2015
    • AHRQ launches EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health in Primary Care.
      EvidenceNOW creates regional cooperatives to work with about 5,000 primary care professionals in 12 states to improve the heart health of their nearly 8 million patients. The initiative aligns with the Million Hearts® national initiative to prevent heart attacks and stroke.
  • 2016
    • AHRQ holds a Research Summit on Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare.
      The summit explores the state of the science of diagnosis in healthcare. Experts discuss ways AHRQ and other stakeholders can contribute to a collaborative approach to identify the research and evidence, tools and training, and data and measures needed to improve diagnostic performance.
  • 2017
    • AHRQ releases the Compendium of U.S. Health Systems.
      The Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2016, is the Nation’s first publicly available database that gives information about the size, structure, and other characteristics of 626 healthcare organizations. Developed by the Agency’s Comparative Health System Performance Initiative, the compendium identifies system characteristics, such as the number of hospitals, acute care beds and physicians, as well as whether a system serves children.
  • 2018
    • AHRQ National Scorecard on Hospital-Acquired Conditions reflects notable reductions.
      Data in the AHRQ National Scorecard on Hospital-Acquired Conditions show that national efforts to reduce hospital-acquired conditions, such as adverse drug events and injuries from falls, helped prevent an estimated 8,000 deaths and save $2.9 billion between 2014 and 2016. The scorecard estimates that 350,000 hospital-acquired conditions were avoided and the rate was reduced by 8 percent from 2014 to 2016.
  • 2019
    • CDS Connect creates an interoperable pain management summary.
      The summary, pulling information from an electronic health record, displays a patient’s medical history, pain assessments, historical treatments and risk considerations.
  • 2020
    • AHRQ Releases New Resources on Patient Safety and Opioids.
      AHRQ releases Making Healthcare Safer III, a new report identifying 47 patient safety practices, which include hygiene and disinfection interventions for reducing healthcare-associated infections, practices to prevent medication errors, and other safety strategies. Also released, Six Building Blocks, a structured systems-based guide to treating patients who use long-term opioid therapy.

If you want a [return] on our basic and clinical investments at NIH, you need AHRQ to improve care delivery so patients can benefit from the therapies that NIH discovered. AHRQ and only AHRQ is responsible for research on how to do it.

Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D.
Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at University Hospitals Health System in Northeast Ohio

AHRQ plays a very important role in primary care research by getting at the core principles of primary care and how we can make it better. That’s important, because most Americans get most of their care in primary care settings, so it has a tremendous health impact.

Alex Krist, M.D., M.P.H.
Professor, Department of Family Medicine & Population Health, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond

Our hospital’s leadership is continuously focused on improving patient safety. They listened to the feedback of our frontline medical staff and took action based on what they heard. [AHRQ’s] CUSP has produced a major change in attitude here, and that has led to a much stronger culture for patient safety.

Ingrid Stuiver, Ph.D.
Director of Clinical Research at Tri-City Medical Center, California

The CAHPS survey was one of the pieces that led us to focus throughout the organization on improving cycle time. We knew this was a significant issue. CAHPS was able to quantify for us just how significant.

Debra Rosen
Director of Quality and Health Education for Northeast Valley Health Corporation (NEVHC), a federally qualified health center

AHRQ funding helped us understand not only how health IT could reduce medication errors, but also the steps we needed to take to get clinicians' support.

Tejal Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H.
Chief Clinical and Safety Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

I can't put into words what AHRQ funding has meant to me and to others I've worked with doing … health services research. For an Agency that has been strapped for funding, it has been pretty remarkable what has been accomplished.

Jerry Gurwitz, M.D.
Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts

Our teams trust each other and are used to talking to each other all the time, thanks to AHRQ and TeamSTEPPS.

Pam Lesser, R.N.C., M.S.
Director of Perinatal Services at SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital in St. Louis

I'm grateful that AHRQ was a leader in recognizing the value of human factors and systems engineering as a method to understand and reduce patient safety risks.

Pascale Carayon, Ph.D.
Procter & Gamble Bascom Professor in Total Quality at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

As a result of [participation in an AHRQ project], I truly believe that patient safety has become ‘top of mind’ for physicians and staff, and nurses have a greater comfort level to raise concerns with physicians without fear of retribution.

Ryan O’Connell, M.D.
Vice President of Performance and Risk Management at Bridgeport Hospital, Connecticut

We benefitted greatly from the [AHRQ] project in helping us improve measures for fall prevention.

Jackie Krason, R.N., M.S.N.
Quality and Risk Management Supervisor, Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, Nebraska

[After using AHRQ’s CANDOR toolkit], we've done a much better job at communicating with patients and their families, and our medical staff has a better understanding of the importance of immediate disclosure following a patient safety event. Patients feel positive about this more open approach. It speaks to the importance of transparency as well as the improvement we've seen in our patient safety culture.

Stephen Pearlman, M.D.
Quality/Safety Officer for Women and Children’s Services and Physician Lead for the CANDOR program at Christiana Care Health System

The research that we’re doing, thanks to AHRQ’s support, is making it easier for clinicians to apply best practices and improve care for patients who suffer from dangerous infections.

Nasia Safdar, M.D., Ph.D.
Medical Director of Infection Control at the University of Wisconsin (UW) Hospitals and Clinics

AHRQ funding allowed us to create technology-supported networks of continual learning and mentorship that bring best-practice care to people in rural and underserved communities.

Sanjeev Arora, M.D.
Director, Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), University of New Mexico
Page last reviewed July 2022
Page originally created December 2019

Internet Citation: AHRQ at 20. Content last reviewed July 2022. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.
https://www.ahrq.gov/cpi/about/20timeline.html

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