How Well Does the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Fund Primary Care and Comparative Effectiveness Research?

Excerpt

In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) established the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to fund research, with an emphasis on comparative effectiveness research (CER), with the goal of helping patients make better informed healthcare decisions.¹ CER is patient-centered research that relies on clinical epidemiology and medical decision making to improve evidence for clinicians and patients. The expectation was to reduce waste and improve healthcare outcomes.¹ Given that primary care represents over half of all physician office visits,² an important question is how well PCORI’s funding mirrors the distribution of where patients receive their care. After the first six rounds (2011–2014) of funding, it was identified that the majority of PCORI research did not have a primary care focus (19–32%).³ Our objective was to evaluate funding from PCORI during 2015–2018 to determine if this has changed, and to determine the type and focus of PCORI-funded research. …