HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson has announced the appointment of Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., as director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the lead agency responsible for supporting research designed to improve the quality of health care, reduce its cost, improve patient safety, decrease medical errors, and broaden access to essential services.
Dr. Clancy has served as acting director since March 2002, and will oversee the development of research that provides evidence-based information on health care outcomes; quality; and cost, use and access. She also will work with the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that reviews research evidence and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services.
Prior to serving as acting director, Dr. Clancy was director of AHRQ's Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research (COER), which conducts and supports studies of the outcomes and effectiveness of diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive health care services and procedures. Before becoming the director of COER in 1997, Dr. Clancy served as director of the Center for Primary Care Research. There she helped develop the U.S. Public Health Service Primary Care Policy Fellowship.
Dr. Clancy is a general internist and health services researcher and a graduate of Boston College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Following clinical training in internal medicine, Dr. Clancy was a Henry Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond prior to joining AHRQ, then named the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, in 1990.
Her major research interests include women's health, primary care, access to care, and the impact of financial incentives on physicians' decisions.