Partnership to Improve Patient Care

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 with their members of Congress to discuss the recently passed health care bill.

Coelho’s speech focused on the importance of patient centered CER in today’s era of personalized medicine. He drew on his own experiences as an epileptic to illustrate the importance of personalized medicine, discussing the differences between growing up in the 1950’s with the disease (a time in which there was little available specialty care) and living with it now, in a time when many patients enjoy doctors who help make living with epilepsy far more manageable that it ever was in the past.

Also discussed were the strong, patient centered CER provisions in the new health care bill, including the creation of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a non government entity which will facilitate CER efforts and communicate results in a clear and understandable manner. 

Coelho said that the laws “require the research to recognize patient differences and include specific references to genetic differences in patients” and that “if these provisions are implemented well… CER can improve patient care and advance personalized medicine.”

He also asked the ASM to work together with PIPC to help “further the interests of patients – and expand their access to specialized care.”

The Alliance, which represents over 100,000 doctors and works to develop health care policy that “fosters patient access to the highest quality specialty care,” has taken a stance similar to PIPC’s on CER related issues. According to their website, ASM supports CER that “focuses on transparency, public input and patient safeguards” and believes that CER results should be communicated in “ways that reflect the differences in individual patient needs.”