Leora Horwitz

Federal cuts to health care research and quality agency make Missouri hospitals less safe • Missouri Independent The Trump administration recently slashed funding for the federal agency that works to improve our health care system.

HHS AHRQ - supported research to make healthcare safer! Now can’t fund grants, publish new NOFOs or award contracts but according to HHS these duties are unnecessary!!

@alt-hhs.altgov.info @firedbutfighting.bsky.social @leorahorwitzmd.bsky.social @donmoyn.bsky.social @muellershewrote.com

Claiming to fight waste, Trump administration slashes potentially cost-saving research Claiming it wants to cut waste, the Trump administration has terminated grants for research testing ways to save the health care system money.

Why cutting funds for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality #AHRQ and other scientific research is penny wise pound foolish. Thanks @ericboodman.bsky.social for including me. #MedSky #HealthPolicy www.statnews.com/2025/08/08/t...

RECOVER: Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery The long-term effects of COVID are real. Join the NIH in the search for answers.

Attention - new opportunity to obtain funding for ancillary studies for #RECOVER #LongCOVID cohorts recovercovid.org/funding/roa-... #MedSky

the return on investment for this type of research is huge.

AHRQ cannot publish new funding opportunities - it’s beyond the awards process….

So much of the research that I use to help treat patients in my family medicine office comes from #AHRQ. On a day with a lot of depressing news, this it at the top

This is wildly reckless; AHRQ is little known to the general public and even those working in healthcare- but their behind the scenes impact is massive. See the 🧵

Full details on the meeting: insidehealthpolicy.com/share/149694

Background: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality was founded in 1999 to improve health care quality, and now the entire grants staff have been laid off. (Disclosure: AHRQ funded my first year of graduate school.)

AHRQ funds a good chunk of the practical medical research in the US.

Message me directly

If we really wanted to reduce healthcare costs, we’d increase AHRQ funding. This is tragic and short-sighted. Another disappeared federal agency that no one knows about but has helped save numerous lives (Q=Quality) and lots of money

AHRQ is the Agency for HealthCare and Research Quality. It more than pays for itself by providing practical insights about a sector that represents a huge portion of GDP. But Trump has decided that research is inefficient.

This is such good work by Hopkins’ Joe Levy and team

#HBHI @bsph-hpm.bsky.social

Man this one really hurts AHRQ is vital to evidence based practice and making healthcare better

Just reckless, anti-science and will cause real harm in the long run on people.

Important thread 🧵 on a terrible decision.
Thank you @leorahorwitzmd.bsky.social

AHRQ does amazing work in healthcare that saves lives and saves money. 👑

Defunding it is just dumb. It’s something you’d only do if you were trying to destroy our healthcare system, not fix it. 💣

It’s almost like the current administration is actively trying to destroy the country…🤔

And that's just a handful of results from June/July alone. AHRQ's entire annual research budget is $224M. Without it, we will have more infections, higher costs, more diagnostic errors & less evidence-based care. It pays for itself many times over! Please, consider contacting HHS or your local reps.

AHRQ-funded researchers did a series of interventions on over 7.5 million radiology reports to reduce ambiguous/unnecessary recs for additional imaging while increasing useful recs 7-fold, leading to a 30% increase in follow-up of important findings. t.co/zWUC9K3LaK

AHRQ research found that 3/100 people hospitalized for a high risk problem were actually seen in the ED within the prior week, suggesting the diagnosis may have been missed, and illuminating ways in which we could try to avoid those misses. t.co/1a9X338rLs

AHRQ-funded researchers figured out how best to disinfect carpet to prevent spread of C. diff, which causes half a million infections in the US every year. t.co/d9JqqPhhsT

AHRQ funded a massive revision of national guidelines for assessing the safety and effectiveness of electronic health record design - a requirement for all hospitals and EHR developers that had not been updated since 2016. t.co/HAsAND16RD

AHRQ-funded researchers figured out an extremely reliable way to identify people who are incorrectly labeled as being allergic to penicillin, allowing them to get safer, more effective antibiotics. t.co/rWrAHwirEo

AHRQ-funded research found that 40% of kids aren't getting evidence-based treatment for pneumonia. t.co/OfhoEo10Zp

AHRQ-funded researchers calculated the US could save $150M every year by switching from low molecular weight heparin to aspirin for blood clot prevention in orthopedic trauma patients. (That grant cost <$100K.) t.co/NqWBB3X0rx

Heard from #AHRQ that the entire grants staff has been let go! They are unable to issue funds for grants already funded, let alone fund new grants. This is outrageous and will make Americans poorer and sicker. Why? A brief thread about just some recent AHRQ-funded research: #MedSky #HealthPolicy

Fascinating. What’s the proposed mechanism?

Panel A is a Sankey diagram showing titration and discontinuation rates by month from first prescription. Panel B shows cumulative discontinuation rates by month, reaching 46% by month 5.

Online early in Obesity, in a study of >15K patients nationally, we find that almost half of people prescribed #semaglutide (Wegovy) stop taking it by 5 months - esp if they have a high copay or lower income - even though all had commercial insurance. #MedSky onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...