Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

HTTPS colon slash slash SNET.

AHRQ.

GOV.

Perspective.

It happened in May of 2026, where the two chairs of the task force, John Wong and Issa Davis, I had rotated off the month before.

were called by the director of AHRQ, asked to meet with him by Zoom, and fired on the

spot.

That caused a lot of consternation because these recommendations and their independence are respected quite a lot in the medical field.

Insurers rely on them, as we've talked about.

What happened after that?

Well, the two fired chairs wrote a letter to the director of AHRQ asking for the rationale for their firing and got a response back.

And I can say this, it's not secret, it's been in the news.

She founded NYU's Program for Medical Education Innovations and Research, also known as PRIMER, and directs the NYSIM NYU standardized patient program, helping shape how clinicians are trained and assessed across the educational continuum.

Dr. Zabar has been a principal investigator on HRSA, AHRQ, and other foundation grants and has received numerous national awards for her contributions to medical education.

She's authored more than 100 peer-reviewed pubs and is the co-editor of the second edition of objectives to a structured clinical examination, 10 steps to planning and implementing OSCEs and other standardized patient exercises, a widely adopted research for medical schools nationwide.

And we're excited to bring you this season of the Curbsiders Teach with the support and in partnership with the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine.

I think there is value to this.

So we worked together to write a grant targeted at an AHRQ R18 grant.

And the goal was basically kind of threefold, was to one, dive into pediatric medication errors, and kind of better understand why the errors occur, what they are, what contributes to them, then develop and pilot the technology, do usability testing and other things, and then ultimately examine the efficacy of that technology in a randomized controlled trial, a simulation-based randomized controlled trial.

So, we submitted this grant, and shockingly, we actually got the grant for $1.34 million.

But even that isn't getting to the referring physicians.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, AHRQ, defines care coordination as the deliberate organization of care activities among everyone involved, carried largely by the exchange of information.

Deliberate.

But when that exchange runs on a fax machine and voicemails, And other antiquated technology.

regarding the CDC's social determinants of health program legislated in 2020, politely phrased, legally continues to function in a diminished capacity.

With the intentional erosion of institutional trust and public health consensus, the dismantling of HHS operational divisions, likely moreover the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the continuing absence of structural coverage reforms.

For example, while the average number of measles infections in Pennsylvania between 00 and 2020 was under three, this year the number to date is likely several thousands.

Those disproportionately impacted are, of course, young children.

And a few months before I rotated off, we saw five members rotate off.

And we wrote two emails to the director of AHRQ saying, five members are rotating off.

And then I'm rotating off in March.

We're going to be up to half speed.

or not.

If we weren't officers of the government, we shouldn't be able to make policy because we haven't been appointed as officers of the government.

Well, Biden was president, and Biden's DOJ argued that we were actually inferior officers, that the Secretary of Health and Human Services could actually make our appointment, not the president, And he could work through his proxy in AHRQ, but ultimately the secretary would have to appoint us.

And that would be sort of like the constitutionality of the thing.