Attachment D -- Email Invitation with web-link

Dear [Dr. /Mr. /Ms.] [lastname]:

I am writing to ask for your help in identifying and communicating the value of research on healthcare costs, productivity, organization, and market forces and also to determine how best to strengthen efforts to support such research in the future.

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) is conducting a study about research in these areas and its effects on private and public policy decision-making. The study is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). As part of this study, we are conducting a nationwide survey of researchers working in this area. You are one of more than 100 principal investigators who have received support from AHRQ to conduct research in this area since the late 1990s.

Below is a web link to the survey. Your responses are vital to the success of our study.

<<web link to survey>>

Our study is being advised by an expert panel that is strongly supportive of the need for a survey to collect information on research in this area. The panel members include:

• Sharon Arnold (AcademyHealth)

• Jon Christianson (University of Minnesota)

• Paul Ginsburg (Center for Studying Health System Change)

• Robert Helms (American Enterprise Institute)

• Gail Wilensky (Project HOPE).

With the panel’s guidance, we have completed a first phase of the study, which identified, catalogued, and described recent grant-funded studies in the area of costs, productivity, organization, and market forces that were sponsored by AHRQ. We are now starting a critical second phase that will examine how the results from AHRQ-sponsored studies are disseminated and used for decision-making. The survey we are asking you to take part in is an essential part of this second phase of our study.

Your feedback on AHRQ’s performance will be kept confidential. To support the study’s objectives, information you provide on publications and outcomes of grants may be reported publicly. Your participation in this study will assist AHRQ in its mission of supporting the synthesis and dissemination of research for use by patients, consumers, practitioners, providers, purchasers, policymakers, and educators. If you would like a hardcopy version of the survey mailed to you or have any questions about the survey, please call Tara Krissik at 202-484-9220.

Sincerely,

Marsha Gold, Sc.D.

Senior Fellow

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc

600 Maryland Avenue, SW

Suite 550

Washington DC 20024