Medscape April 4, 2025
Sue Sheridan’s baby boy, Cal, suffered brain damage from undetected jaundice in 1995. Helen Haskell’s 15-year-old son, Lewis, died after surgery in 2000 because weekend hospital staffers didn’t realize he was in shock. The episodes turned both women into advocates for patients and spurred research that made American health care safer.
On April 1, the Trump administration slashed the organization that supported that research — the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ — and fired roughly half of its remaining employees as part of a perplexing reorganization of the federal Health and Human Services Department.
Haskell, of Columbia, South Carolina, has done research and helped write AHRQ-published surveys and guidebooks on patient engagement for hospitals. The dissolution of...
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