WASHINGTON, July 30 -- Susan Edgman-Levitan spent years designing the survey that hospitals use to learn how many of their patients develop preventable infections, receive the wrong medication, or leave with a condition they did not arrive with. In July, her salary disappeared. So did the salaries of her research assistants and survey scientists, all at once, when the federal grant that paid them ran out and no renewal came.

That grant came from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the only federal body whose sole purpose is to fund the science of making American healthcare safer. Congress appropriated $345 million for the agency in fiscal year 2026. The Trump administration has distributed less than $15 million of it in grant...