Partnership to Improve Patient Care

Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) Chairman Tony Coelho was quoted in an Inside Health Policy article this week discussing his concerns on the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) plans to build a CER inventory before the creation of the Patient Centered Outcomes and Research Institute, an independent board that will facilitate CER research.

Partnership to Improve Patient Care Chairman Tony Coelho recently sent a letter to Sherry Glied, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recommending that the Agency work closely with the Patient Centered Outcomes and Research Institute when building its planned nationwide CER database.

Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) chairman, Tony Coelho, recently delivered a speech on patient centered comparative effectiveness research (CER) in front of fifty specialty doctors from around the country, among others, at the Alliance for Specialty Medicine’s (ASM) “Capitol Hill Advocacy Conference.” The conference took place just a day before the specialty doctors met w

A new Health Affairs article concludes, based on focus groups and interviews, that "consumers will revolt if evidence-based efforts are perceived as rationing or as a way to deny them needed treatment."

You don't need to look any further than public reaction to the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force's updated recommendations on mammography screening to see the proof of this.
 
How should policy-makers react? Should they conclude that consumers, and even more so, patients, cannot be relied on to make evidence-based decisions, and therefore these decisions need to be made for them? Or should they conclude that evidence-based models of medical care and health delivery need to be carefully constructed so they have the trust and support of patients and consumers?

A recent Wall Street Journal article about the use of stent procedures in the medical community and the reaction to it by blogger Burt Cohen, offers another illustration of the complexities of comparative research, and again shows why results should be used to inform doctors and patients, but not to impose broad “one size fits all” prescriptions that do not reflect the complexities of the science or the differences in individual patients.