In This Week’s Issue:
1. Upcoming PCORI Events and Deadlines, see details below.
2. AHRQ Announces Funding for Dissemination of CER, click here for details on the funding opportunity.
3. PCORI Blog: Getting Specific: PCORI Starts Seeking Ways to Better Address Key Health Topics, click here to view the blog post.
4. Blog: A Voice Is Missing from Discussions of the Patient Experiences, click here to view the blog post.
5. Health Affairs Blog: Improving The Rhetoric Of Rationing, click here to view part one of the blog post, and here to view part two.
6. Modern Healthcare: Big Data and Big Government, click here to view the article (subscription only).
1. Upcoming PCORI Events and Deadlines, see details below.
2. AHRQ Announces Funding for Dissemination of CER, click here for details on the funding opportunity.
3. PCORI Blog: Getting Specific: PCORI Starts Seeking Ways to Better Address Key Health Topics, click here to view the blog post.
4. Blog: A Voice Is Missing from Discussions of the Patient Experiences, click here to view the blog post.
5. Health Affairs Blog: Improving The Rhetoric Of Rationing, click here to view part one of the blog post, and here to view part two.
6. Modern Healthcare: Big Data and Big Government, click here to view the article (subscription only).
1. Upcoming PCORI Events and Deadlines
July 1 is the deadline for applying to serve on one of the review panels that will meet this fall to assess applications for our August 2013 cycle of PFAs. Patients and other stakeholders join scientists in helping us ensure that the research we fund is both scientifically rigorous and truly patient-centered. Click here to find out more information.
On July 9, PCORI host a one-hour webinar to present results of a survey of patients and clinicians assessing their views on comparative effective research and engagement in research. Expert panelists will put the findings in context. Click here to register for the webinar.
PCORI’s Improving Healthcare Systems program will convene a multi-disciplinary workgroup on July 12 to identify unanswered questions that are important to patients and other stakeholders when deciding whether to participate in transitional care programs as they move from hospital to home. The one-day meeting will be available via webinar. Click here to register.
The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will host a regional workshop at the Westin Memphis Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, August 1. The event, The Power of Partnership in Research: Improving Healthcare Outcomes in Underserved Communities, is designed to help build a patient-centered research community in the south-eastern region of the U.S. Click here to register for the event.
2. AHRQ Announces Funding for Dissemination of CER
This week, AHRQ posted a new funding opportunity entitled “Disseminating Patient Centered Outcomes Research to Improve Healthcare Delivery.” This opportunity seeks to fund qualifying non-profit organizations in disseminating patient-centered outcomes research, while partnering with broad networks of providers and stakeholders in this collaborative dissemination and implementation process. The broader intent of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to help spur the implementation of comparative-effectiveness research (CER) evidence locally and in collaboration with a diverse range of providers and stakeholders participating in a broader network. As stated by AHRQ, “the FOA requires that applicants represent existing networks of providers and other stakeholders that have the knowledge, on-going relationships, expertise, infrastructures, past experience and understanding of local needs and constraints to maximize buy-in, collaboration, and appropriate adaptation to local conditions.” Letters of intent are due by August 26. Full applications are due by 5pm (of the local time of the applicant organization) on September 27. Click here for details on this funding opportunity.
3. PCORI Blog: Getting Specific: PCORI Starts Seeking Ways to Better Address Key Health Topics
In a recent post on the PCORI Blog, PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby and Chief Science Office Bryan Lance discussed their recent funding announcements. The writers comment, “As we continue to invite and fund patient-centered outcomes research projects under a set of broad priority areas announced last year, we've now started issuing what we expect will be a series of funding announcements focused on specific high-impact health topics. Some announcements will address questions within a specific illness; others will be cross-cutting. With each announcement, we aim to concentrate resources and accelerate progress toward definitive, useable information for patients and those who care for them as they face specific questions.” Click here to view the blog post.
4. Blog: A Voice Is Missing from Discussions of the Patient Experiences
Dr. Jessie Gruman, Founder of the Center for Advancing Health, wrote in MedPage Today’s blog, “We are at long last invited to have a seat at the tables of health care governance and scientific research. More of us need to be there, representing our experiences and the experiences of others – not just the outlying (i.e., shocking, heartwarming) experiences – but those of normal people's everyday efforts to make use of health care to keep us and our families healthy, to return us to health when we are injured or ill and to help us maintain our functioning and equilibrium when our health is declining.” Click here to view the blog post.
5. Health Affairs Blog: Improving The Rhetoric Of Rationing
In the first section of a two part blog post for Health Affairs Blog, Bryan Dowd and Kirk Allison comment, “To the extent that consumers perceive that the application of comparative effectiveness research to decision making could limit their choice of providers, inappropriately interfere with physicians' recommendations for treatment, or appear to ‘ration’ care based on cost, the efforts will encounter consumer resistance and could lead to a broad consumer backlash.” Click here to view part one of the blog post.
In part two of their discussion the authors write, “In addition to misusing the term ‘rationing,’ another important impediment to productive discussions of the prudent use of health care services is the perspective taken by the discussants. Cost-savings services, along with improved clinical outcomes, underlie much of the enthusiasm behind ‘value-based health insurance design.’ Value-based insurance reduces the point-of-purchase cost-sharing for services that have greater clinical benefits for specific patients.” Click here to view part two of the blog post.
6. Modern Healthcare: Big Data and Big Government
Merrill Goozner of Modern Healthcare reports, “The era of big data allows providers and payers to merge their de-identified patient records into huge cloud-based databases. Given access to this trove of information, researchers could run retrospective clinical trials, conduct comparative effectiveness research and analyze the real world outcomes of highly touted technologies to see if they actually lived up to their promise.” Click here to view the article (subscription only).
July 1 is the deadline for applying to serve on one of the review panels that will meet this fall to assess applications for our August 2013 cycle of PFAs. Patients and other stakeholders join scientists in helping us ensure that the research we fund is both scientifically rigorous and truly patient-centered. Click here to find out more information.
On July 9, PCORI host a one-hour webinar to present results of a survey of patients and clinicians assessing their views on comparative effective research and engagement in research. Expert panelists will put the findings in context. Click here to register for the webinar.
PCORI’s Improving Healthcare Systems program will convene a multi-disciplinary workgroup on July 12 to identify unanswered questions that are important to patients and other stakeholders when deciding whether to participate in transitional care programs as they move from hospital to home. The one-day meeting will be available via webinar. Click here to register.
The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will host a regional workshop at the Westin Memphis Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, August 1. The event, The Power of Partnership in Research: Improving Healthcare Outcomes in Underserved Communities, is designed to help build a patient-centered research community in the south-eastern region of the U.S. Click here to register for the event.
2. AHRQ Announces Funding for Dissemination of CER
This week, AHRQ posted a new funding opportunity entitled “Disseminating Patient Centered Outcomes Research to Improve Healthcare Delivery.” This opportunity seeks to fund qualifying non-profit organizations in disseminating patient-centered outcomes research, while partnering with broad networks of providers and stakeholders in this collaborative dissemination and implementation process. The broader intent of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to help spur the implementation of comparative-effectiveness research (CER) evidence locally and in collaboration with a diverse range of providers and stakeholders participating in a broader network. As stated by AHRQ, “the FOA requires that applicants represent existing networks of providers and other stakeholders that have the knowledge, on-going relationships, expertise, infrastructures, past experience and understanding of local needs and constraints to maximize buy-in, collaboration, and appropriate adaptation to local conditions.” Letters of intent are due by August 26. Full applications are due by 5pm (of the local time of the applicant organization) on September 27. Click here for details on this funding opportunity.
3. PCORI Blog: Getting Specific: PCORI Starts Seeking Ways to Better Address Key Health Topics
In a recent post on the PCORI Blog, PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby and Chief Science Office Bryan Lance discussed their recent funding announcements. The writers comment, “As we continue to invite and fund patient-centered outcomes research projects under a set of broad priority areas announced last year, we've now started issuing what we expect will be a series of funding announcements focused on specific high-impact health topics. Some announcements will address questions within a specific illness; others will be cross-cutting. With each announcement, we aim to concentrate resources and accelerate progress toward definitive, useable information for patients and those who care for them as they face specific questions.” Click here to view the blog post.
4. Blog: A Voice Is Missing from Discussions of the Patient Experiences
Dr. Jessie Gruman, Founder of the Center for Advancing Health, wrote in MedPage Today’s blog, “We are at long last invited to have a seat at the tables of health care governance and scientific research. More of us need to be there, representing our experiences and the experiences of others – not just the outlying (i.e., shocking, heartwarming) experiences – but those of normal people's everyday efforts to make use of health care to keep us and our families healthy, to return us to health when we are injured or ill and to help us maintain our functioning and equilibrium when our health is declining.” Click here to view the blog post.
5. Health Affairs Blog: Improving The Rhetoric Of Rationing
In the first section of a two part blog post for Health Affairs Blog, Bryan Dowd and Kirk Allison comment, “To the extent that consumers perceive that the application of comparative effectiveness research to decision making could limit their choice of providers, inappropriately interfere with physicians' recommendations for treatment, or appear to ‘ration’ care based on cost, the efforts will encounter consumer resistance and could lead to a broad consumer backlash.” Click here to view part one of the blog post.
In part two of their discussion the authors write, “In addition to misusing the term ‘rationing,’ another important impediment to productive discussions of the prudent use of health care services is the perspective taken by the discussants. Cost-savings services, along with improved clinical outcomes, underlie much of the enthusiasm behind ‘value-based health insurance design.’ Value-based insurance reduces the point-of-purchase cost-sharing for services that have greater clinical benefits for specific patients.” Click here to view part two of the blog post.
6. Modern Healthcare: Big Data and Big Government
Merrill Goozner of Modern Healthcare reports, “The era of big data allows providers and payers to merge their de-identified patient records into huge cloud-based databases. Given access to this trove of information, researchers could run retrospective clinical trials, conduct comparative effectiveness research and analyze the real world outcomes of highly touted technologies to see if they actually lived up to their promise.” Click here to view the article (subscription only).
