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Turning Evidence into Action: How to Implement CER at Point of Care
Issue Brief from Mathematica’s Center on Health Care Effectiveness Offers Strategies
Contact: Amy Berridge, (609) 945-3378
Washington, D.C.—January 20, 2011—Health policy experts agree that better information on what works in the health care system is crucial to improving value and delivering better patient care. Passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided significant funding to expand the nation’s production of comparative effectiveness research (CER)—which health care interventions work best under what circumstances. However, better evidence of the relative effectiveness of clinical services will not by itself solve the myriad challenges facing our health care system. To improve health care, CER needs to be successfully interpreted, disseminated, and implemented in decision-making at the point of care.
Significant challenges remain to using comparative effectiveness research as a tool to change health care practice and improve outcomes. These include coordinating the many existing efforts that are under way; improving the research infrastructure and defining appropriate CER research methodology; involving the full range of health care decision makers, including consumers; and recognizing that better information alone will not change health care.
“Using Comparative Effectiveness Research: Information Alone Won't Lead to Successful Health Care Reform,“ a new issue brief from the Center on Health Care Effectiveness at Mathematica Policy Research addresses strategies on how to get comparative effectiveness research into use at the point of care, focusing on (1) how to translate and disseminate knowledge into usable formats, (2) provider incentive reform, (3) transforming systems of how health care is delivered, and (4) engaging consumers.
The Center on Health Care Effectiveness was founded in 2010 to inform health care policy and improve patient outcomes. Building on more than four decades of Mathematica’s substantive expertise, methodological skill, and corporate infrastructure, the center is at the forefront of CER policy analysis and research. It combines a collaborative, collegial tradition with the broad-based talents of more than 150 health services researchers and scientists whose knowledge spans methodologies and disciplines. In addition to conducting comparative effectiveness policy analysis and research, the center provides evidence syntheses, delivery system research on putting CER into practice, and technical assistance for policymakers on using evidence to promote effective care.
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 disability, health care, education, family support, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs.