Jim
Harvey
On April 3, 2009, public testimony on comparative effectiveness
research was given at a meeting of the National Advisory Council
for Healthcare Research and Quality. The testimony represents
the views of the presenter and not necessarily those of the Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) or the Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Council provides advice and recommendations to the Director,
AHRQ, and to the Secretary, HHS, on priorities for a national
health services research agenda.
Delivered Via Electronic Mail
Here are my thoughts regarding comparative effectiveness research
programs:
1. Disease and injury registrars—Determine if disease and injury
registrars similar to the cancer registrars should be established in order to
track the effectiveness of various treatment approaches for diseases and
injuries other than cancer. Which new registrars to establish could
depend upon the total healthcare expense for a disease/injury and the
uncertainty as to which treatment is best for the disease/injury.
2. Best practices adoption success—Determine to what extent best
practices that are already known have been successfully adopted by facilities
that have tried to adopt them.
3. Determine reasons for not following good practices—Investigate to
find some key areas of deficiencies and why the deficiencies occur. For
instance, if infusion start/stop times are not recorded is it because staff does
not know the correct practice, there is some morale issue at the facility, there
are insufficient staff, etc. It may be that having more monitoring of best
practices, providing availability of instructions as to what the best practice
is, making incentive payments for following best practices
and recognizing staff for following best practices will promote
following best practices.
Jim
Harvey
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