Statement: PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH, Following Center for American Progress Event on Comparative Effectiveness Research

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute was created to help patients and those who care for them make better-informed health decisions. Our primary focus is funding comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER), studies that compare multiple care options. But more research by itself is not likely to improve clinical decision-making. That’s why our mandate, as outlined in our authorizing legislation, is not just to fund high-quality CER and evidence synthesis, but also to share the results in ways that are relevant and useful to patients, clinicians and others.

We’re also charged with improving the methods used in conducting those studies and enhancing our nation’s capacity to do such research. We will be evaluated ultimately on whether the research we fund can change clinical practice and help reduce the variations and disparities that stand between patients and better outcomes.

We appreciate the Center for American Progress’ interest in and support of our mission, as we do feedback and input from our stakeholders across the healthcare community. But we disagree with CAP’s estimate of the proportion of our research portfolio that is focused on CER.

We’ve invested nearly $500 million in research to date. As the chart we provide below indicates, about 62 percent of the primary research studies our Board had approved or awarded have focused on CER, with the rest spread across infrastructure (18%), methods (11%), and communication and dissemination research (8%).

Our CER investments will significantly increase, as we launch our pragmatic studies initiative Feb. 5 and issue additional targeted funding announcements for research that directly compare outcomes between two or more approaches to addressing important clinical issues. To facilitate the conduct of more efficient patient-centered CER, PCORI also recently made major investments to develop PCORnet, a national health data network that will provide the infrastructure necessary to enhance CER supported by PCORI and others.