The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been formally asked to investigate whether the Administration illegally withheld congressionally appropriated funds at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), following a Monday, September 22, request from the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health Ranking Member Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-CA). This investigation would come after nearly six months in which AHRQ has been unable to fund new research grants—delaying critical studies that help improve patient safety, strengthen care delivery, and ensure Americans receive high-quality, high-value care – due to policy choices made by the Administration. You can read the letter sent to GAO here.
Congress has authorized and appropriated funds for AHRQ to be the federal home of health services research: the science that answers the most important question in health care: what works, for whom, and at what cost? However, since April 1, the Administration has instituted a policy that effectively dismantled AHRQ’s grantmaking operations, including terminating staff that legally process, evaluate, fund, and monitor the grant programs that Congress has tasked with improving health outcomes for patients across the country. As a result, since April 1, AHRQ has not funded a single new grant and access to continuing grant obligations has remained a trickle. You can learn more about how the grantmaking process at AHRQ broke down here.
By failing to notify Congress under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and have Congress approve them, these actions appear to constitute an illegal impoundment of funds. Given recent GAO investigations, we are confident that GAO will find an ICA violation. On August 5, GAO concluded that the National Institutes for Health (NIH) violated the ICA by withholding funds from obligation and expenditure. GAO also declared in July that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated the ICA when it withheld funds appropriated for Head Start, a federal program offering early education and care programs and services for low-income families. In both cases GAO concluded that the administration had withheld congressionally appropriated funds without sufficient justification or authorization. Additionally, GAO stated in its reports that it will be monitoring the ongoing litigation related to both impoundments, which should include the AHRQ impoundment case represented by Public Citizen.
“Evidence saves lives,” said Dr. Aaron Carroll, president and CEO of AcademyHealth. “We are grateful for the leadership of Representatives DeGette and Matsui in standing up for the research that powers better health outcomes through rigorous evidence, just as Congress designed. When research funding is blocked, the progress that improves patient outcomes slows or stops altogether. This investigation is an important step toward restoring AHRQ’s ability to carry out the work Congress intended and the public needs.”
AcademyHealth is the home for the Friends of AHRQ, which has brought together the entire health care ecosystem – from researchers to patients to providers to hospitals to health systems to insurers to think tanks to universities, and more – to stand strong for improving the quality of health care delivery in this country by supporting a fully funded, independent, and intact AHRQ.