Approaching diagnosis as a team activity is seen as a key approach to diagnostic effectiveness. This notice highlights a funding opportunity to launch Diagnostic Centers of Excellence to improve diagnosis of undiagnosed and unknown disease and research to inform improvement.

Equity improvements are gaining increased traction as a patient safety strategy. This announcement seeks proposals that would use dissemination and implementation science to fill evidence gaps critical to the development, adaption, implementation, and evaluation of equity-focused evidence-based interventions to accelerate health equity within healthcare delivery systems. The application deadline is April 21, 2023.

The articulation of diagnostic error in the ambulatory setting is emerging. These newly released funding announcements seek proposals that focus on understanding the factors contributing to diagnostic error and strategies to improve diagnostic safety in the ambulatory care environment. The application deadline for both opportunities is April 18, 2023.

This funding opportunity will support collaborative learning strategies that enable individuals and organizations to employ rapid prototyping to engineer new approaches focused on improving diagnosis and treatment. This learning laboratory funding builds on prior initiatives to further improvements in patient safety. The project submission process is now closed.

Diagnostic improvement engages a variety of activities to achieve excellence. This announcement highlights ten organizations AHRQ funded to establish Diagnostic Safety Centers of Excellence. Their focused efforts will work to improve diagnostic safety and quality. Areas of project focus include use of information technology to improve diagnostic accuracy and teamwork as an improvement strategy.

Medication errors are a consistent challenge in health care. This funding announcement seeks applications that focus on standardization and process enhancements to reduce care delivery factors that decrease the safety of medication use. This funding announcement expired January 27, 2022.

A lack of consensus on measures for the effectiveness and accuracy of diagnosis represents a gap in improvement methods. This announcement seeks proposals to examine quality measures to motivate excellence in three primary areas of diagnostic concern:  acute vascular events, infections, and cancer. There are no active funding opportunities through this program at this time.

Maternity care is increasingly being recognized as vulnerable to implicit biases and social inequities. This funding announcement aims to support initiatives that promote equity as a primary component of efforts to study preventable maternal harm in a variety of disadvantaged and ethnic populations. The application process is now closed.

Improving diagnosis and reducing diagnostic errors are patient safety priorities. This announcement supports the development of Diagnostic Centers of Excellence focused on improving frontline diagnostician support and improving diagnostic systems (i.e., improving diagnostic precision through consensus, improving “truth” or diagnostic reference standards). The application process is now closed.

The impact of diagnostic error is increasingly clarified as research defines primary areas of concern. This grant program will provide 20 seed grants to multidisciplinary teams that include patients. The work will devise and test interventions to improve the diagnostic process and includes areas of special interest exploring diagnosis in the older adult population and on cross-discipline teams. The 2022 application process closes March 25, 2022.

Patient suicide attempts are considered never events. This funding announcement calls for program applications to motivate suicide prevention strategy implementation in the indigenous peoples’ community. The effort anchors on the Zero Suicide initiative to address unique challenges presented by the Indian health system. The application period closed in February 2022.

This funding opportunity supports large research demonstration and implementation projects applying existing strategies to understand and reduce adverse events in ambulatory and long-term care settings. Projects focused on preventing harm in disadvantaged populations to improve equity are of particular interest. The funding cycle will be active through May 27, 2024.

Health care–associated infections occur across various health care settings. AHRQ seeks to support large research (R01) and dissemination (R18) projects working to develop strategies and approaches for preventing and reducing health care–associated infections. Applications will be accepted on a standard submission schedule through May 27, 2025.

Digital strategies hold promise for improving point-of-care efficiency, communication, and safety. This funding opportunity will support research exploring how digital technology can be designed and implemented to improve the quality of healthcare services delivery at the point of care. Areas of interest include the use of patient-facing technologies, development of advanced analytics, and improvements in point-of-care clinical decision making.

The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic requires unique evaluation strategies to examine system responses to the pandemic and its effects on quality and patient safety. AHRQ will award $5 million in fiscal year 2020 to support novel, high-impact studies that evaluate the responsiveness of health care delivery systems, health care professionals, and the overall U.S. health care system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. AHRQ expects to fund critical research focused on topics such as the effects on quality, safety, and value of the health system response to COVID-19; the role of primary care practices and professionals during the COVID-19 epidemic; understanding how the response to COVID-19 affected socially vulnerable populations and people with multiple chronic conditions; and the integration of digital health in the response to COVID-19, including innovations and challenges encountered in the expansion of telehealth. The process for submitting applications is now closed.

Communication during patient transitions carries the potential for mistakes that can result in patient harm. This program (funding) announcement will support the testing of interventions to improve communication and coordination during care transitions within and between a variety of care environments. Applicants are encouraged to incorporate a care transitions model such as Project RED into their research design. Applications are no longer being excepted.

Medication error is a persistent challenge to safe care. This funding announcement seeks to stimulate research aligned with the FDA’s Safe Use Initiative. 

Diagnostic error research is emerging as an area of focus in health care. This funding opportunity will support large research projects that seek to examine diagnostic processes and diagnostic errors in a variety of settings and patient populations. The application process is now closed.

This announcement highlights Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funding opportunities for health services research to assess local, state, and system-level policy to address the opioid crisis, evaluate interventions to minimize opioid misuse, and understand the rapid increase in opioid-related hospitalizations. This funding opportunity is now closed.

Research on patient safety improvements has largely focused on the acute care environment. This grant will support funding for demonstration and implementation projects aimed at identifying and evaluating the application of evidence-based practices in ambulatory care and long-term care to improve patient safety. The deadline for submitting applications is September 8, 2021.