AHRQ Understanding and Improving Diagnostic Safety in Ambulatory Care: Incidence and Contributing Factors (R01)

The purpose of this R01 NOFO is to invite proposals focused on Understanding and Improving Diagnostic Safety in Ambulatory Care: Incidence and Contributing Factors.  These settings include emergency medicine, primary care, urgent care, mental health, obstetrics and gynecology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and oncology, and connected ambulatory systems such as the cancer pathway, which involves numerous subspecialities. R01 applications are generally focused on hypothesis driven research, rather than demonstrating the effectiveness of a result or a method. A hypothesis is a tentative explanation that can be tested by further investigation. Thus, an R01 application hypothesis may be "patients who have a blinded second opinion prior to getting a diagnosis will have fewer diagnostic errors than patients who have a diagnosis without a second opinion."

As there has been little study of diagnostic safety in many areas of ambulatory care, researchers are encouraged first to investigate the incidence and contributory factors of diagnostic error. These observational findings then may be used to design and perform hypothesis testing involving patient safety interventions based in these environments.

The purpose of this funding announcement is to invite proposals focused on understanding and improving diagnostic safety in the heterogenous ambulatory care environment.  AHRQ is interested in learning the strengths and weaknesses within and across the array of ambulatory care diagnostic services and in providing support designed to develop, test, and evaluate such activities.