Making Health Care Safer in Ambulatory Care Settings and Long-term Care Facilities (R18) | PA 21 267

Opportunity Information: Apply for PA 21 267

The Making Health Care Safer in Ambulatory Care Settings and Long-term Care Facilities (R18) opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number PA 21-267) is a discretionary grant program from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), listed under CFDA 93.226. It sits within AHRQ's broader mission to generate practical evidence that makes health care safer, improves quality, expands access, advances equity, and helps reduce costs, while also making sure the resulting evidence is actually understood and used by health systems, policymakers, and other partners. The focus here is specifically on patient safety outside the traditional hospital inpatient setting, targeting ambulatory care (outpatient clinics, physician practices, and other outpatient environments) and long-term care facilities (such as nursing homes and related residential care settings).

AHRQ's Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS) is the lead within the agency for this work, and the emphasis is on building, testing, improving, and spreading concrete safety solutions that can function in real-world care environments. In practical terms, projects funded under this announcement are expected to strengthen patient safety by developing or refining processes and implementation approaches, and by producing usable measures, metrics, tools, and practices. The underlying idea is not just to study safety problems in the abstract, but to create and validate things that frontline organizations can adopt to reduce harm, improve reliability, and track safety performance over time in ambulatory and long-term care settings.

Eligibility is broad and includes many public and private entities that commonly conduct health services research or run care improvement initiatives. Eligible applicants include state, county, city or township governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; Native American tribal governments (federally recognized); tribal organizations (other than federally recognized tribal governments); public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; and nonprofit organizations both with and without 501(c)(3) status (as long as they are not institutions of higher education in the categories specified). The announcement also notes additional eligible applicant types such as faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, U.S. territories or possessions, and several categories of minority-serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs). Eligible agencies of the federal government are included as well. Foreign organizations and foreign institutions are not eligible to apply, and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are also not eligible, which means the work and organizational presence supported by the award must be domestic.

The funding instrument is a grant, and the activity category is health. The listing provided does not specify an award ceiling or expected number of awards, so applicants typically need to consult the full notice and any linked guidance for budget and project period expectations. The original closing date shown is May 26, 2024, and the opportunity record indicates it was created on September 9, 2021. Overall, the program is best understood as an applied patient safety funding opportunity aimed at producing actionable, measurable improvements in safety practices and infrastructure in outpatient and long-term care environments, with an explicit expectation that funded work will translate into tools, metrics, and implementation approaches that others can use.

• The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Making Health Care Safer in Ambulatory Care Settings and Long-term Care Facilities (R18)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.226.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2021-09-09.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-05-26. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, Others.

Apply for PA 21 267

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