Partnership to Improve Patient Care

Mission Statement

The mission of the Partnership to Improve Patient Care (PIPC) is to raise awareness about the value of well-designed comparative effectiveness research (CER), the important role of continued medical innovation as part of the solution to cost and quality challenges in health care, and the need to ensure that proposals to expand the government´s role in CER are centered on patient and provider needs.

PIPC members, representing a diverse, broad-based group of health care stakeholders, are dedicated to working together to promote CER that protects patient access to innovative treatment options; supports the ability of patients, doctors and other health care professionals to choose the care that best meets the individual needs of the patient; and, fosters continued medical innovation. Comparative effectiveness research can be a valuable tool to learn what works in health care and support good clinical decision-making. At the same time, such research can be misapplied in ways that restrict patient access to optimal care, undermine physician/patient decision-making, and discourage continued medical progress.

Supporting Principles

In order to put patients and providers first, any CER proposal must:

• Define CER as a tool to improve patient care;
• Enhance information about treatment options and about how to close the gap between care known to be effective and the care patients receive;
• Focus on communicating research results to patients, providers and other decision-makers, not making centralized coverage and payment decisions or recommendations;
• Provide information on clinical value and patient health outcomes, not cost-effectiveness assessments;
• Design studies that reflect the diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, of patient populations and communicate results in ways that reflect the differences in individual patient needs;
• Assure that studies are technically excellent and appropriate;
• Require open and transparent processes where all stakeholders have input into research priorities and design and have an equal voice in governance of a CER entity;
• Examine all aspects of health care including care management, medical interventions, benefit design, and processes of care for all patients;
• Support continued medical advances, including personalized medicine and other advances that can help improve patient care and control health care costs;
• Recognize the unique nature and value of targeted therapies that benefit specific groups of patients with rare and orphan diseases.

A Procedural Framework for the Conduct of Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research

This paper inventories and discusses the basic elements of the framework for CER that are identified in PPACA: requirements for stakeholder participation in comparative effectiveness research; requirements for transparency in procedures and operations; requirements for public opportunity to comment on CERs and to be engaged in Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) review processes; and requirements for open decision-making processes. This paper also compares these requirements to current procedures developed and used by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to conduct CER through its Effective Health Care Program and through the funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Click here to view the Executive Summary

Click here to view full text of PIPC White Paper