Editorial: Save AHRQ; spend more on delivery system R&D

In the world of healthcare delivery system reform, Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins University is a rock star. His pioneering work in reengineering hospital processes that lead to unnecessary infections has been credited with preventing 50,000 deaths and saving the healthcare system over $12 billion.

Much of that work was financed by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Pronovost still relies on AHRQ for funding. His Learning Lab at Johns Hopkins is in the middle of a four-year, $1 million effort to translate the interdisciplinary team approach used by the U.S. Navy on its submarines into better processes inside the nation's intensive-care units. The goal, according to the grant proposal on the AHRQ website, is “to eliminate preventable harm, optimize patient outcomes and experience, and reduce waste in healthcare.”

For decades, the nation has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into basic and applied science to devise cures for diseases. With support from the drug and device industries, which mine that research, legislation to boost the National Institutes of Health's $30 billion budget has become a bipartisan cause célèbre on Capitol Hill.