The Future of AHRQ’s Health Services Research

Richard Kronick, PhDWithin days after draft congressional spending bills for 2016 proposed eliminating funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), dozens of health care organizations raced to the agency’s defense. Writing as “Friends of AHRQ,” more than 100 health groups signed letters in June and July urging the House and Senate to maintain AHRQ and the research it funds. To do otherwise “is pennywise and pound foolish,” the groups wrote (http://bit.ly/1U0GVJS).

“Americans deserve reliable information on how to deliver the best possible care, at the greatest value, with the best outcomes,” they added. “AHRQ-funded health services research provides those answers.” Critics, however, say the agency duplicates work by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), which carries out comparative effectiveness research (http://bit.ly/1I0r1ue). House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (D, Ky) said in a statement that “great efforts were made to ensure none of the funding in the [2016 spending] bill is spent wastefully or inappropriately” (http://1.usa.gov/1D9Wzhf).

Both houses of Congress will have to resolve their differences to pass a 2016 federal budget bill, which then goes to President Obama for his signature or veto. In the meantime, AHRQ Director Richard Kronick, PhD, sat down with JAMA to talk about the agency’s work and its relationship with other federal health research entities. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation...