Trump is laying waste to the agency that keeps hospital patients safe | Robert B Shpiner
Central lines, the catheters we threaded into the great veins of the critically ill, became infected, and some of those patients died. Almost no one thought of them as preventable, because no one had yet done the slow work of proving they were.That work got done, and federal money paid for it. Beginning in 2008, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a small arm of the health department, funded a national effort in more than a thousand adult intensive care units: a checklist, a sterile insertion protocol, and a unit culture in which a nurse could stop a surgeon.
- ▪Central lines, the catheters we threaded into the great veins of the critically ill, became infected, and some of those patients died.
- ▪Almost no one thought of them as preventable, because no one had yet done the slow work of proving they were.That work got done, and federal money paid for it.
- ▪Beginning in 2008, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a small arm of the health department, funded a national effort in more than a thousand adult intensive care units: a checklist, a sterile insertion protocol, and a unit cult
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| Original publisher | The Guardian — US |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/07/trump-healthcare-hospital-quality-patient-safety |
| Publication time | Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:00:16 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-07T12:10:41.815Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-07T12:10:41.815Z |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | p1rxZjQHtlXJ · 1 stories |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
‘If you have spent a night in an American hospital in the past 20 years, this agency was working on your behalf whether you knew it or not.’ Photograph: Thanapol Kuptanisakorn/AlamyView image in fullscreen‘If you have spent a night in an American hospital in the past 20 years, this agency was working on your behalf whether you knew it or not.’ Photograph: Thanapol Kuptanisakorn/AlamyOpinionUS healthcareTrump is laying waste to the agency that keeps hospital patients safeRobert B ShpinerFew have heard of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, but it has saved tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollarsFri 7 Aug 2026 08.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 7 Aug 2026 08.01 EDTShareWhen I started my training in 1980, we accepted an arithmetic that would now be indefensible.
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