Making Health care Safer in Ambulatory Care Settings and Long Term Care Facilities (R18) | PA 18 750

Opportunity Information: Apply for PA 18 750

The Making Health Care Safer in Ambulatory Care Settings and Long Term Care Facilities (R18) opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number PA-18-750) is a discretionary grant program from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), listed under CFDA 93.226. It is designed to support large, practical research demonstration and implementation projects that make patient care safer outside the hospital, specifically in ambulatory care environments (such as outpatient clinics and physician practices) and in long term care facilities (such as nursing homes and other residential care settings). The overall purpose aligns with AHRQ's broader mission to generate usable evidence that improves safety, quality, access, equity, and affordability, and to ensure that this evidence is understood and applied in real-world healthcare settings.

A central theme of the announcement is implementation, not basic discovery. AHRQ is explicitly looking for projects that put proven patient safety approaches into practice and then rigorously study how well those approaches work when deployed at scale in day-to-day operations. Rather than asking applicants to invent entirely new tools from scratch, the FOA emphasizes taking measures, metrics, tools, or practices that have already been validated and shown to be effective, and then developing, applying, and evaluating strategies for successful implementation. In other words, the work should focus on how to reliably adopt evidence-based safety processes, how to integrate them into workflows, and how to measure whether they improve outcomes in the targeted settings.

The opportunity highlights transitions in care as a particularly important safety priority. Transitions, such as moving a patient from a hospital to a nursing facility, from a primary care practice to a specialist, or from an outpatient procedure back to home care, are common points where communication failures, medication discrepancies, incomplete follow-up, and unclear responsibility can lead to preventable harm. Projects that strengthen these handoffs and reduce the safety risks that arise when patients move between providers and settings are especially responsive to the intent of the program.

This grant is administered through AHRQ's Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS), reflecting the agency's focus on developing and scaling processes that improve safety across multiple care environments. The funded work is meant to be actionable and implementation-oriented, producing findings, lessons, and replicable strategies that other clinics and long term care organizations can use. While the announcement does not list an award ceiling or the number of expected awards in the excerpt provided, it characterizes the funded work as "large" demonstration and implementation projects, signaling an expectation of meaningful scope, robust evaluation, and real-world operational impact.

Eligibility is broad across many types of U.S.-based organizations that can conduct and operationalize safety improvement work. 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; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; tribal organizations (including those other than federally recognized tribal governments); public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status (other than institutions of higher education); for-profit organizations (other than small businesses); and small businesses. The FOA also calls out additional eligible applicant categories such as faith-based or community-based organizations, Hispanic-serving institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), among others. At the same time, foreign organizations and non-U.S. institutions are not eligible to apply, and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are also not eligible, which keeps the work centered in U.S. healthcare delivery contexts.

Key administrative details in the provided listing include an original closing date of September 7, 2021, and a creation date of April 10, 2018. The funding instrument type is a grant, and the activity category is health. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as an implementation science and demonstration funding mechanism focused on scaling what already works in patient safety, testing implementation strategies in ambulatory and long term care, and generating evidence that helps healthcare organizations reduce harm, particularly during high-risk transitions in care.

• 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 2018-04-10.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-09-07. (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, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for PA 18 750

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