Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality AHRQ

Congress created the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research in a budget law signed on December 19, 1989, to study which treatments work and how care is delivered. After some of its treatment guidelines angered medical specialty groups in the mid-1990s, it narrowly survived elimination, and the Healthcare Research and Quality Act of 1999 renamed it and refocused it on quality and safety. It is led by a Director.

Where the National Institutes of Health studies diseases and cures, AHRQ studies the health care system itself: how to prevent medical errors and hospital infections, how to coordinate care, and how much care costs. It runs the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, the main federal source of data on what Americans spend on health care, publishes the annual National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, and supports the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, whose recommendations determine which preventive services most insurance plans must cover at no cost.

In June 2025 the Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management upheld the task force's structure on the ground that the HHS Secretary can remove its members and review its recommendations. In 2025 AHRQ lost a large share of its staff in department-wide layoffs, and the HHS reorganization proposed merging it into a new Office of Strategy. Supporters said its functions could be preserved more efficiently, while health researchers warned that the nation's main patient safety and cost data could be lost.