The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) plans to fund the creation of state-based Healthcare Extension Cooperatives to accelerate the implementation and dissemination of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) into healthcare delivery through improvements in healthcare policy, payment, and practice, and to reduce healthcare disparities, especially among people who receive Medicaid, are uninsured, and/or are medically underserved.
AHRQ will award up to 15 grants to establish and support state-based Healthcare Extension Cooperatives, over five years. To support an initial initiative focused on behavioral health, cooperatives will:
• Engage key stakeholders such as Medicaid; Medicaid managed care organizations; clinicians and staff from safety-net healthcare delivery organizations; and patients, families, and caregivers who receive care from safety-net health care delivery organizations and are members of uninsured and/or medically underserved populations;
• Work with healthcare policy, payment, community, care delivery, and research organizations to build their capacity to implement patient-centered, evidence-based healthcare delivery improvements and support ongoing learning through training and other tools;
• Conduct evaluations of the cooperative's activities; and
• Provide the support structure to ensure these activities are integrated and aligned.
“Recognizing that all healthcare is local, with wide variation based on geography and demographics, AHRQ’s Healthcare Extension Cooperatives provide scaffolding to local healthcare transformation by fostering improvements in healthcare policy, payment, and practice,” said AHRQ Director Robert Valdez., Ph.D., M.H.S.A., in a statement. “This initiative aims to use data, PCOR clinical evidence, and stakeholder input to align payment and other incentives, reduce local barriers, and address urgent healthcare issues, leading to improved healthcare by reducing the time from scientific innovation to routine clinical practice.”
In the coming weeks, AHRQ will announce two additional funding opportunities to support Cooperatives. One will support a national coordinating center, to provide cooperatives with a wide range of support, resources, and collaborative guidance and to convene cooperatives to facilitate mutual learning in real time.
The second funding opportunity will create an independent national evaluation center to provide a detailed understanding of how healthcare extension services vary across cooperatives, assess the impact and equity of these models, identify contextual factors associated with recipient success, and document the barriers and facilitators to the delivery of healthcare extension services.
One goal of the effort is to significantly reduce the time from evidence generation to clinical practice. As AHRQ learns more about supporting states in transforming healthcare delivery, the agency anticipates expanding this initiative to all states.
AHRQ's Healthcare Extension Service is funded through an investment from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund.
