Partnership to Improve Patient Care

With enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the patient and provider communities now for the first time have a blueprint for patient-centered comparative effectiveness research written into law.  

In a recent press release, PIPC outlined the most important CER provisions in the bill.

“Congress worked hard to pass health care reform that included patient-centered CER.  The bill will result in the creation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a non government entity which will facilitate CER efforts and disseminate results in a manner that can be understood by patients.”

“The bill’s patient centered language will also help to ensure that future CER efforts prioritize clinical effectiveness as opposed to cost-effectiveness and that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) cannot use CER as a way to overlook the individual needs of patients or discriminate against seniors or those with disabilities”:

Now that these provisions have become law, we in the patient and provider communities have an obligation to work in support of this new Institute and ensure that it achieves its goal of patient-centered CER. This work will start soon, with steps like the naming of the Institute's Board of Governors and establishment of a research dissemination program at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. PIPC is proud to have been a lead supporter of these provisions of the law, and we will continue working with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to advance research that empowers patients and providers and improves health care quality.