Partnership to Improve Patient Care

PCORI released a draft of their National Priorities for Research and Research Agenda for public comment. The PCORI Board, which is responsible for funding research, is asking for a 55 day public comment period to discuss and solicit feedback from patients, caregivers, professionals, and the general public on the research priorities.

In the draft, PCORI prioritized five broad research areas:

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 few days ago, I posted about what I saw as one of the key lessons from the controversy over the new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s (USPSTF) mammography guidelines, namely, that expert panels can sometimes come to different conclusions based on the same evidence.