Andrew Bindman, MD, will take the helm at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ is charged with finding ways to improve healthcare by making it more accessible, affordable, equitable – and safer.

Bindman, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics, and also an affiliated faculty member within the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UC San Francisco, will be on leave from UCSF while serving as AHRQ director. He has spent more than 30 years practicing, teaching and conducting health sciences research at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

Bindman succeeds another UCSF professor, Richard Kronick, who resigned on March 18 to return to UCSF. He had led the agency since August 2013 August 2013, when he replaced longtime director Carolyn Clancy MD.

"He’s a magnificent choice, because he brings that rare combination of being evidence-driven, with a lot of heart," Claire Brindis, director of Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, said in statement.

In 2015 House Republicans tried, but failed, to withdraw funding from the agency. Had they been successful it would have effectively shut it down.

[Also: AHRQ gets big show of support on Capitol Hill]

During his time at UCSF, Bindman assumed several leadership roles, including chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center and director of the California Medicaid Research Institute, which is a partnership between UCSF and the California Department of Health Care Services.

Bindman has also been active in the policy arena. In 2009-2010, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow on the staff of the Energy and Commerce Committee within the U.S. House of Representatives. There, he helped draft legislative language for the federal health reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

From 2011 to 2014, Bindman served as a senior adviser to the HHS Office of Health Policy. And from 2014-2015, he was a senior adviser to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.