AHRQ's 35th Anniversary

AHRQ Timeline

For 35 years, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has been a beacon of progress in health services research, embodying the visionary theme of "Today's Research, Tomorrow's Healthcare." AHRQ has consistently acted as a research incubator, fostering innovations that lay the foundation for the future of healthcare.

The timeline below delineates key milestones that illustrate AHRQ's instrumental role in nurturing research initiatives that address critical challenges in healthcare. AHRQ has continuously propelled health services research forward. Our commitment to reducing disparities, advancing patient-centered care, and integrating technology into healthcare research exemplifies our role in shaping the future of healthcare through rigorous inquiry and innovation.

• 1989
  • Agency for Health Care Research and Policy receives full agency status.

    Congress elevated the National Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology Assessment to full agency status as the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR).

• 1990
  • AHCPR begins studying practice pattern variations.

    By funding Patient Outcomes Research Teams (PORTs), focused on treatments for certain high-cost, high-risk health conditions where outcomes were uncertain—especially for Medicare beneficiaries—multidisciplinary teams analyzed what treatments work, at what cost, and why treatments vary. They developed and tested methods for reducing inappropriate variations on topics such as diabetes, heart disease, hip replacement, and pneumonia.

• 1992
  • AHCPR begins developing Clinical Practice Guidelines.

    Based on the topics studied by the Patient Outcomes Research Teams (PORTs), the guidelines represented a synthesis of the published research to date on best clinical practices, as well as a consumer guide for patients. Between 1992 and 1996, AHCPR had released 19 guidelines.

• 1995
  • The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) moves to AHCPR.

    The USPSTF is an independent, volunteer panel of national experts in disease prevention and evidence-based medicine, for which the Agency provides research and administrative support. The USPSTF issues guidelines, which are evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services.

• 1996
  • AHCPR launches the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS).

    MEPS – a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers (doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.), and employers – would become the most complete source of data on the cost and use of healthcare and health insurance coverage in the United States.

• 1997
  • AHRQ establishes the Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs).

    The EPCs produce evidence reports on medications, devices, and other health care services to help consumers, clinicians, and policymakers make evidence-based healthcare decisions. Each EPC is made up of multidisciplinary teams that also are trained in different types of research, such as epidemiology, health services research, and organizational change research.

• 1997
  • AHRQ co-creates the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC).

    In partnership with the American Medical Association and the American Association of Health Plans, the NGC provided detailed, objective information on clinical practice guidelines to help healthcare providers make informed decisions. A web-based version of the NGC launched in 1999, and in 2001, AHRQ launched a sister website—the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse—to make quality measures widely available to the health community. Both programs were funded until 2018.

• 1999
  • Congress passes the Healthcare Research and Quality Act.

    Sponsored by Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), with support from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Rep. Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), signed into law by President Bill Clinton, it established AHRQ as the lead Federal agency on healthcare quality and safety research and revised the Agency’s name (formerly the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research). The reauthorization elevates the position of AHCPR Administrator to AHRQ Director.

• 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.

• 2000
  • AHRQ establishes Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs).

    PBRNs are groups of existing primary practices that work together to answer community-based healthcare questions and translate research findings into practice by engaging clinicians in quality improvement activities and encouraging an evidence-based culture in primary care practice. By 2023, the program had grown to over 50 PBRNs serving over 24 million patients.

• 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.

    The new questionnaire added to AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey indicates 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.

• 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 the 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 USPSTF-recommended preventive service to provide based on a patient’s 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® tool to improve communications among healthcare workers.

    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
  • AHRQ releases 17 toolkits from its Partnerships in Implementing Patient Safety Program.

    These toolkits, designed to help doctors, nurses, hospital managers, patients, and others reduce medical errors, range from checklists that help reconcile medications at hospital discharge to processes that enhance effective communication among caregivers and patients to toolkits that help patients taking medications. AHRQ products from these projects include Your Guide to Preventing and Treating Blood Clots and Preventing Hospital-Associated Venous Thromboembolism: A Guide for Effective Quality Improvement.

• 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 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.

• 2008
  • Healthcare-Associated Infections becomes a focus for AHRQ’s patient safety research portfolio.

    Congress also directs AHRQ, CDC, and CMS to partner on the development of a National Action Plan to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The Road Map to Elimination (HAI Action Plan) is designed to help prevent HAIs in multiple healthcare settings and to coordinate efforts on antibiotic stewardship efforts. AHRQ subsequently awards $17 million to projects to fight costly and dangerous healthcare-associated infections.

• 2009
  • AHRQ establishes the Comparative Effectiveness Research Program.

    The Effective Healthcare Program develops evidence on the effectiveness, benefits, and harms of different treatment options, generated from research studies that compare drugs, medical devices, tests, surgeries, or ways to deliver healthcare.

• 2010
  • AHRQ awards $473 million for comparative effectiveness research of healthcare treatments.

    The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding grants and contracts directs AHRQ to accelerate the development and dissemination of evidence on the comparative effectiveness of healthcare treatments, synthesize research that compares clinical outcomes, and encourage the development of clinical registries and clinical data networks and other forms of electronic health data to generate or obtain outcomes data.

• 2011
  • AHRQ-funded Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) is successful in Michigan.

    Hospital staff in Michigan intensive care units cut by more than 70 percent the rate of pneumonia in patients on ventilators with CUSP methods. 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 is a general guide for using improvement methods for hospitals that use Inpatient Quality Indicators and Patient Safety Indicators to improve care. The Quality Indicators use hospital administrative data to assess the quality of care provided, identify areas needing further investigation, and monitor progress over time. The toolkit focuses on 17 Patient Safety Indicators and the 28 Inpatient Quality Indicators.

• 2013
  • Patient safety programs reduce neonatal ICU infections.

    Central line-associated bloodstream infections in newborns were reduced by 58 percent in less than a year in hospital neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) 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 releases the report, Annual Hospital-Acquired Condition Rate and Estimates of Cost Savings and Deaths Averted from 2010 to 2013.

    The report shows an estimated 50,000 fewer patient deaths in hospitals and a savings of approximately $12 billion in healthcare costs. The improvements in hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2013 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.

    The EvidenceNOW initiative 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 convenes a Research Summit to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine.

    The summit explores the state of the science of diagnosis in healthcare. Experts discuss ways AHRQ and other stakeholders can collaborate 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, 2016.

    This 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
  • The National Nursing Home COVID Action Network is established.

    The Network is established to provide free training on evidence-based infection prevention practices. The Network was funded through a $237 million contract and is based on the ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) Model, which was initially funded by AHRQ in 2004.

• 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.

• 2021
  • The QuestionBuilder en Español mobile app is launched.

    The app can help Latinos prepare for in-person and telehealth medical appointments, part of AHRQ’s effort to improve healthcare access and equity. Latinos have among the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group within the United States.

• 2023
  • AHRQ awards $45 million to support multidisciplinary Long COVID clinics.

    Funds are for clinics in rural, underserved areas and minority populations, which are disproportionately impacted. The grants are the first of their kind and will support comprehensive, coordinated, and person-centered care for Long COVID patients.

• 2023
  • Guiding Principles Help the Healthcare Providers Address Potential Bias Resulting from Algorithms.

    AHRQ researchers and other experts publish a paper in the JAMA Network Open to address the impact of algorithms on racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare and offer approaches to mitigate biases.