Technical Assistance for Primary Care Practice Transformation: Free Help to Perform Unpaid Labor?

This issue of the Annals of Family Medicine includes multiple articles reporting early information from the implementation of the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) initiative EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health in Primary care. This $112 million initiative—one of the largest in AHRQ’s history—funds 7 cross-organizational collaboratives to assist 1,500 small (fewer than 10 clinicians) primary care practices to improve their care for cardiovascular disease. Meyers et al1 provide thoughtful explanations of the ways in which AHRQ designed EvidenceNOW to navigate the trade-offs between implementation (including permitting flexibility and local adaptation) and rigorous evaluation.