The National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality met March 16 to update council members about the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) activities and priorities.
AHRQ Chief Financial Officer Lucie Levine presented on the President's Fiscal Year 2019 Federal Budget [see Washington Highlights, Feb. 16]. She noted the proposal to transition research activities to a new National Institute for Research on Safety Quality, as well as the proposed discontinuation of research funding for the Health Information Technology Research portfolio and $38 million reduction in the Health Services Research, Data, and Dissemination research portfolio.
Also during the meeting AHRQ Chief Medical Officer David Meyers, MD, highlighted several projects, including EvidenceNOW, a collaboration of over 1,500 primary care practices to improve heart health through the use of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) evidence. Looking forward, he said that AHRQ intends to scale up work related to opioid research as well as PCOR dissemination and implementation efforts. Dr. Meyers also noted that a priority area for the agency is identifying ways to advance learning health system implementation, and that AHRQ Director Gopal Khanna, MBA, has been on a listening tour, meeting with and collecting information from health system leaders from across the country.