NHC UPDATE
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Moving Forward on CER -June 2010
With the passage of the health care reform bill, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the National Health Council and the patient community have numerous opportunities to impact the nation’s comparative effectiveness research (CER) agenda. Recently, the NHC called on its patient advocacy members to help identify individuals willing to sit on two of the new committees authorized by Congress.
The health care reform bill authorizes the creation of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The institute is charged with identifying CER priorities and establishing the research project agenda. Its Board of Governors includes three seats reserved for “members representing patients and health care consumers.” In addition, PCORI will establish a Methodology Committee, which will address the science and methods of conducting CER. The committee will be composed of no more than 15 individuals appointed by the Comptroller General.
The NHC is working with its patient advocacy organization members and various coalitions to present a united slate of candidates to ensure strong representation from the patient community on both entities.
Having the patient voice on the PCORI committees will help to extend the NHC’s ongoing work on CER. Currently, NHC President Myrl Weinberg serves as a member of the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research and Quality, which provides advice and recommendations to the Secretary and the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on priorities for a national health services research agenda. In addition, NHC Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Marc Boutin was recently selected to serve on AHRQ’s Effective Healthcare Program Stakeholder Group. The role of the Stakeholder Group is to provide input on critical research information gaps between practice and policy, and to help identify and develop the key research questions to address these gaps.
Ensuring the patient community has ample representation on many different fronts will help the NHC in its effort to shape the scope of federal CER activities.
