NHC UPDATE
Comparative Effectiveness -June 2009
The NHC continues to receive updated analyses of current legislation and bills introduced this congressional session on health care reform from its consultant, Avalere Health. The NHC’s Health Care Reform Issue Team is using these materials to educate NHC members on several areas that will be part of any overall health care reform plan.
One of these areas, comparative effectiveness research (CER), was a significant part of the stimulus legislation. By using the values developed by the NHC’s Comparative Effectiveness Subcommittee, the NHC has been able to substantially influence the debate on this area of research.
In March, NHC President Myrl Weinberg testified before the Institutes of Medicine (IOM) committee charged with establishing priority research areas for CER and in April she testified before the Federal Coordinating Council for CER, emphasizing the need to take into account the individual needs of patients and the inclusion of delivery system reform in comparative effectiveness research.
NHC was asked by the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Carolyn Clancy, to meet on this issue and arranged a high level discussion with her and CEOs of the member patient advocacy organizations at the NHC offices on April 20.
The NHC also arranged for a similar meeting with officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to discuss CER. The meeting included Dr. Lana R. Skirboll, acting director of the NIH Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, and Dr. Richard Hodes, co-chair of the NIH CER Coordinating Committee and director of the National Institute on Aging.
In the first four months of this year, NHC staff members have conducted more than a dozen meetings with Hill staff on CER. Through conversations with these Senate Finance offices, the NHC has worked to support a transparent and open CER governing process with strong patient and consumer representation.
The NHC built on these congressional meetings by submitting two sets of comments to the Senate Finance Committee in response to its two recent Policy Options papers “Transforming the Health Care Delivery System: Proposals to Improve Patient Care and Reduce Health Care Costs” and “Policy Options for Expanding Health Care Coverage.” Many of the NHC CER values were supported in the Policy Options papers. NHC comments strongly encouraged Congress to move forward with the patient-centered, long-term framework for use of CER funds as envisioned by the NHC markup of the Comparative Effectiveness Research Act of 2008.
