Trump administration has quietly throttled an agency devoted to the safety of American

The Trump administration has effectively shut down most of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's activities, closing the spigot on federal funding estimated to have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars over the past 27 years by improving medical practice. In.

The gutting of AHRQ strikes some of the administration's critics as particularly shortsighted, though, because of the agency's noncontroversial focus on patient safety and its overall alignment with Trump and Kennedy's "Make American Healthy Again" campaign against chronic illness. The Trump and Kennedy changes.

What Happened

All of AHRQ's grant managers have been fired, so there would be no way for AHRQ to directly oversee future grants, said Brent Sandmeyer, a former AHRQ program officer. "You wonder about this administration's commitment to fighting fraud," he said.

• Although Congress appropriated $345 million for AHRQ for this fiscal year, the agency has spent less than $15 million on grants and hasn't issued a new one in over a year, according to a.

• About 75% of agency staffers have been fired or quit since President Donald Trump took office last year, according to HHS.

• As an AHRQ-funded researcher since 2010, Rao has produced work that led to new approaches for common problems seen in doctors' offices, such as how to respond to weight loss in aged and frail.

Key Details

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said AHRQ intended to establish a new "framework" for grants. She did not reply to requests for further details.

• Practices introduced because of AHRQ-funded studies prevented an estimated 20,500 deaths and saved $7.7 billion in healthcare costs from 2014 to 2017 alone, according to an analysis the agency conducted.

• Teams at Harvard, Yale, and Rand in Santa Monica, California, developed a national standardized patient survey that HHS and healthcare systems use to refine healthcare practices with patient perspectives in mind, said Susan Edgman-Levitan.

• The $1 million annual grant was for developing hospital surveys regarding childbirth and behavioral health services.

Why It Matters

Researchers who received the letter from AHRQ Director Roger Klein expressed bewilderment because much of their work has the same objectives that Klein highlighted as the agency's current priorities. His research, funded until recently by AHRQ, has aimed to reduce medical errors.

• The lawsuit, which is pending, argues that failure to use most of AHRQ's $369 million fiscal 2025 appropriation is illegal under a 1974 law intended to protect Congress' power of the purse.

• The Society for General Internal Medicine sued Klein and health secretary Kennedy last August over AHRQ's failure to issue new grants.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by CBS News as more details emerge