Get Updates
Mathematica’s Center on Health Care Effectiveness to Evaluate CER Portfolio
Project Aims to Assess Capacity, Inform Growth
Media Advisory: October 6, 2010
Contact: Amy Berridge, (609) 945-3378
The Issue: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allocated $1.1 billion to expand the infrastructure and reach of comparative effectiveness research (CER), an important tool in health care reform. Effective CER implementation rests on knowledge of the nation’s existing CER capacity as well as gaps and areas for improvement.
Study: The Center on Health Care Effectiveness (CHCE) at Mathematica Policy Research recently was awarded a $4.2 million contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation to evaluate the nation’s ARRA-funded CER investments. The project will identify gaps as well as barriers to achieving CER goals, develop metrics to assess impacts, and provide ASPE feedback on short-term progress from ARRA CER initiatives.
The evaluation’s research approach will be collaborative, obtaining input from a wide variety of stakeholders. It will employ multiple data collection methods to evaluate the broad range of relevant federal initiatives funded under ARRA and gain insights from stakeholder and community perspectives.
Quote: “We’re excited about conducting this evaluation to examine the effectiveness of ARRA investments in building our nation’s CER capacity,” said Eugene Rich, M.D., director of CHCE, senior fellow at Mathematica, and project director. “CER is an important tool in health care reform and can help us move forward to provide more efficient health care delivery, by informing patients, providers, and other stakeholders.”
About the Center on Health Care Effectiveness: CHCE is a resource for policymakers, the public, and other stakeholders, offering broad-based expertise to provide objective answers to today’s most difficult health care questions. The center uses the best scientific methods to address challenging, real-world issues faced by patients, providers, and innovators, creating information they can use to improve health care on the ground.
About Mathematica: Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan research firm, provides a full range of research and data collection services, including program evaluation and policy research, survey design and data collection, research assessment and interpretation, and program performance/data management, to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Ann Arbor, Mich., Cambridge, Mass., Chicago, Ill., Oakland, Calif., and Washington, D.C., has conducted some of the most important studies of health care, education, international, disability, family support, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs.