On April 1, the Trump administration slashed the agency that supports patient safety research

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality , or AHRQ , was slashed by the Trump administration on April 1 .

Survey data gathered by the agency provides much of what is known about hospitalizations for motor accidents, measles, methamphetamine, and thousands of other medical issues.

The dissolution of the agency is dislodging scores of experienced patient-safety experts, a brain drain.

Republicans have long been skeptical of AHRQ and the agency that preceded it.

Some doctors saw it as meddling in their medical practices, while some GOP Congress members viewed it as duplicating the mission of the National Institutes of Health .

But when the Trump administration proposed merging it with NIH in 2018 , a House -ordered study into health research priorities validated its valuable role.

The elimination of the agency’s office that funds outside researchers, among the cuts, is potentially “career-ending”.

DOGE has taken an ax to AHRQ , which recently put out a new request for proposals to study AI in health care.

“Some think AI will fix health care without a human in the loop,” Singh said. “I doubt we get there by dismantling people who support or perform patient safety research.”.