Trump is laying waste to the agency that keeps hospital patients safe (The Guardian, 7 August 2026)

Summary

The Trump administration is dismantling the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an organisation credited with major improvements in hospital safety, including preventing thousands of deaths and saving billions in healthcare costs. In this Guardian article, Robert B Shpiner, an internist and clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, describes how grants have been abruptly cancelled, staff dismissed, and core patient‑safety programmes halted despite congressional funding, leaving critical research—such as maternal health, infection prevention, diagnostic safety, and rural telehealth—without support. He warns that replacing evidence‑based safety work with vague promises about AI and “new priorities” will quietly increase preventable harm in hospitals, eroding decades of progress in patient safety.