February 10, 2010

How Will Comparative Effectiveness Research Affect the Quality of Health Care?

Elizabeth Docteur and Robert Berenson recently published their research titled How Will Comparative Effectiveness Research Affect the Quality of Health Care in the "Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy Issues February 2010". Comparative effectiveness (CE) is defined as the study of methods to "prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care". Comparative effectiveness encompasses alternative approaches to improve health care delivery for consumers, clinicians, purchasers, and policy makers.

In this report, Docteur and Berenson discuss comparative effectiveness and how, if used, will produce better information on what health care involvements truly work under what circumstance and make this information available to physicians, patients, and payers. The report outlines main topics of discussion which include who is conducting research on comparative effectiveness, efforts to strengthen ongoing research, the limited current use of CE benefits decisions, how CE research will affect health care, how CE will be used, and the role in costs CE will play. The ultimate goal of this report is to provide readers with evidence that comparative effectiveness will produce more quality information on what works in health care.