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Recent events showed that the federal health evidence system rested more on custom than on law. AcademyHealth's new Blueprint proposes ways to turn that custom into obligations that bind. blueprint.academyhealth.org
Modernizing Federal Health Evidence: The Blueprint
A practical plan to protect the federal research, tracking, and data behind health decisions, so decision-makers have evidence they can trust.
blueprint.academyhealth.org
Today AcademyHealth released Modernizing Federal Health Evidence: A Blueprint, a nonpartisan plan to strengthen the institutions, data systems, workforce, and protections behind federal health evidence, built to hold across administrations. buff.ly/c777bmN
Modernizing Federal Health Evidence: The Blueprint
A practical plan to protect the federal research, tracking, and data behind health decisions, so decision-makers have evidence they can trust.
buff.ly
I've spent the better part of the year working on this, but it's really the outcome of a decade of work dating back to the Paradigm Project. The key question then was how do we build a better, more durable, more impactful evidence system. The Blueprint gives us a point from which to start.
@aaronecarroll.bsky.social · 3d agoHow do we build a federal health evidence system that holds up under any administration? AcademyHealth's new Blueprint is our nonpartisan, agency-by-agency attempt to answer that question. blueprint.academyhealth.org
How do we build a federal health evidence system that holds up under any administration? AcademyHealth's new Blueprint is our nonpartisan, agency-by-agency attempt to answer that question. blueprint.academyhealth.org
Modernizing Federal Health Evidence: The Blueprint
A practical plan to protect the federal research, tracking, and data behind health decisions, so decision-makers have evidence they can trust.
blueprint.academyhealth.org
Health services research helps address the things Americans dislike most about health care - costs, access, quality, and delays in care. The GAO has now confirmed that funding for that work was illegally withheld. Read AcademyHealth's response: ahsituationreport.substack.com/p/gao-finds-...
GAO Finds AHRQ Funds Were Illegally Withheld
AcademyHealth applauds GAO investigation, which validates the intentional collapse of AHRQ grantmaking that AcademyHealth has documented over the last 18 months.
ahsituationreport.substack.com
The GAO has confirmed that AHRQ funding was illegally withheld. $80 million in health services research authorized by Congress never reached researchers, disrupting studies focused on patient safety, access, quality, and affordability. Read our response: buff.ly/k5xJhBS
GAO Finds AHRQ Funds Were Illegally Withheld
AcademyHealth applauds GAO investigation, which validates the intentional collapse of AHRQ grantmaking that AcademyHealth has documented over the last 18 months.
buff.ly
Issue 6 of our Decisionmaker's Guide is out. My goal was the same as it has been with every issue: understand the evidence, explain why the estimates differ, and be clear about what we don't know. Read it and judge for yourself. academyhealth.org/publications...
Single Payer: Two Trillion-Dollar Headlines, One Complicated Question | AcademyHealth
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A new single payer analysis projects 114,000 fewer deaths. But 51,311 of those are attributed to reversing 2025 coverage rollbacks, not to single payer itself. That's 45% of the headline estimate. Our guide breaks it down. academyhealth.org/publications...
Single Payer: Two Trillion-Dollar Headlines, One Complicated Question | AcademyHealth
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In the final Pain Points episode, I dig into why medical bills ambush people: opaque pricing, messy billing, and a brutal appeals process. The video shows what’s hidden, what’s not said, and what to ask for. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ4r...
Why Are Healthcare Costs So Confusing?
Have you ever opened a medical bill and nearly choked in surprise at the number on the “due now” box, and wondered why the hell it wasn’t covered by your insurance? A lot of that confusion isn’t…
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Why do single payer estimates differ so much? A big reason: assumptions about what hospitals and physicians would be paid when commercial insurance goes away. Yale and AAF make very different assumptions. academyhealth.org/publications...
Single Payer: Two Trillion-Dollar Headlines, One Complicated Question | AcademyHealth
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New Pain Points video: what aren’t insurers telling you? Missing fees, surprise prior auths, fragmented bills. I break it down and provide simple steps to avoid shocking bills. Watch now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ4r...
Why Are Healthcare Costs So Confusing?
Have you ever opened a medical bill and nearly choked in surprise at the number on the “due now” box, and wondered why the hell it wasn’t covered by your insurance? A lot of that confusion isn’t…
youtube.com
I want to see fixes to prior authorization that actually help: standardized rules, policy change, "gold-carding" trusted providers, and better transparency so patients aren’t blindsided. Learn more about these solutions in this week’s Pain Points ep: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0H...
After 17 months without a meeting, The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has new members. This is good news. But how will they evaluate evidence when the infrastructure has been damaged? Read more in our statement: academyhealth.org/blog/2026-09...
New Task Force Members Raise Questions. The Evidence Pipeline Behind Them Raises More. | AcademyHealth
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I’ve walked out of the clinic with a care plan, then later learned an insurer needed prior auth. Hours on hold, repeating my story, wondering whether treatment will happen. How can policy fix this? Watch this week’s Pain Points ep: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0H...
What's the Deal with Prior Authorizations?
Have you ever left a doctor’s appointment with a whole plan to tackle some health issue you’re facing, only to get a call later saying someone at your insurance company, who may or may not be a…
youtube.com
Filling out redundant paperwork, waiting on hold forever, spending hours trying to understand what’s covered and what’s not. This should not be the burden of patients. But it is. Here’s why: www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjT...
Thanks so much to @academyhealth.bsky.social @josh-caplan.bsky.social for this opportunity to write on the potential admin burden problems that can come from introducing new prior authorization requirements to traditional Medicare through the new CMS WISeR pilot program. substack.com/inbox/post/2...
Fraud Prevention or Administrative Burden? Prior Authorization Comes for Medicare
Instead of reducing wasteful care, Medicare’s new WISeR model introduces administrative barriers and delays critical care for patients who need it most.
substack.com
I studied health services research to learn how to improve health systems. In this new Situation Report, Timothy Beebe explains what happens when programs that train the next generation of researchers lose that experience. ahsituationreport.substack.com/p/ahrq-train...
AHRQ Trained the Next Generation of Health Care Delivery Researchers
University of Minnesota faculty member, Timothy Beebe, who had an AHRQ training grant canceled, highlights what it means for the next generation of health services researchers.
ahsituationreport.substack.com
Looking forward to gathering with the D&I community this December at #DIScience26 to discuss how we can better leverage tools and evidence to improve clinical, community, and public health practice. Register here: academyhealth.org/DIScience2026
19th Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health | AcademyHealth
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As a pediatrician, I know that better outcomes start with better evidence. Stephen Patrick's Situation Report is an important reflection on AHRQ, learning health systems, and what's at stake when the research that helps us improve care is cut. ahsituationreport.substack.com/p/the-cost-o...
The Cost of Forgetting How to Learn
Professor and Neonatologist Dr. Stephen Patrick reflects on AHRQ’s role in improving patient care and the downstream impact of his own cancelled grants.
ahsituationreport.substack.com
Turning patients into part-time admins is cruel and inefficient. Endless forms + fragmented billing = missed reimbursements and worse outcomes. Watch this week’s Pain Points ep: www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjT...
Prior authorization can work as designed and still produce bad outcomes. It saves money by reducing use. But some of that reduction may be care patients need. Read more about the tradeoffs in the latest AcademyHealth Decisionmaker's Guide. academyhealth.org/publications...
Prior Authorization Reform: The Evidence Behind the Debate, the Reforms Now Moving, and What No One Is Measuring | AcademyHealth
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Rural communities face hospital closures, workforce shortages, telehealth gaps, and barriers to care. Many canceled AHRQ-funded studies were designed to help address those challenges. Our latest Situation Report shows what's being lost. buff.ly/2OichPU
What Rural Communities Stand to Lose From AHRQ Grant Cancellations
At a time of growing concern about rural health access, several canceled AHRQ-funded projects were generating evidence to help communities overcome some of their most pressing challenges.
ahsituationreport.substack.com
Our new analysis examines 150 AHRQ awards that lost funding. It's not an argument about what the agency's priorities should be. It's a question about whether the reasons given for discontinuing ongoing research fit the public record. Read more: academyhealth.org/publications...
AHRQ Stopped Funding 150 Research Awards. The Record Raises Questions About Why and How. | AcademyHealth
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Sometimes when people talk about heath care spending in the U.S., it just sounds like "blah blah blah." Don’t worry, that won’t be the case in this week’s Pain Points episode. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDqS...
I wrote this in 2015, after candidate Trump said the same things about vaccines at a primary debate. The evidence was clear then. It's clearer now. The only thing that's changed is that this time it comes with an executive order. www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/u...
Not Up for Debate: The Science Behind Vaccination (Published 2015)
The candidates discussed lots of topics at the second Republican debate, but there was one they would have done better to leave alone.
nytimes.com
A teenager with a heart defect saw specialist after specialist. None of them was in charge of his flu shot. He caught influenza & died. The trial testing how to fix that failure was canceled by the federal government in July. My essay in @nytopinion www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/o...
Opinion | Medical Breakthroughs Are a Thrill. Then Comes the Hard Part. (Gift Article)
The Trump administration has dismantled the agency that ensures that research makes its way into medical practice.
nytimes.com
AHRQ canceled studies on patient safety and antibiotic resistance. The reason it gave: to focus on new priorities, including "patient safety" & "preventing antibiotic resistance." That's not a typo. My @nytopinion.nytimes.com on the dismantling of delivery science: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/o...
Opinion | Medical Breakthroughs Are a Thrill. Then Comes the Hard Part. (Gift Article)
The Trump administration has dismantled the agency that ensures that research makes its way into medical practice.
nytimes.com
Conversations around high spending on U.S. health care are often oversimplified, and that’s why policies miss the mark. This week, we’re cutting through the noise in the newest Pain Points episode. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDqS...
Very good episode and includes a shout-out to @aaronecarroll.bsky.social's recent WaPo op-ed on SSRIs.
Julie Rovner@julierovner.bsky.social · 2mo agoOn this week's #WTHealth podcast: the politics of grant terminations; Fauci takes the 5th; and still more on peptides and abortion pills. W/@shefali.bsky.social, @lizessleywhyte.bsky.social, and @rachelcohrs.bsky.social kffhealthnews.org/podcast/what...
This was clearly not the night to be flying home on @americanair.bsky.social 😞