Vivian Ho, Ph.D., chair of health economics at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Houston and professor in the department of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston writes on Comparative-effectiveness research for Hospitals & Health Networks, Using Comparative-Effectiveness Research to Improve Care:
…Comparative-effectiveness research (CER) is not a cure-all for these problems. But it provides vital new information on procedures whose effectiveness has been evaluated in the highly controlled environment of clinical trials, where either a treatment or a placebo is assigned to a narrowly defined group of patients. CER also evaluates procedures that have not had clinical trials.. . . .continued federal support for CER could improve Americans’ health while cutting health care costs. But this can happen only if its conclusions are integrated more thoroughly into the decisions America’s health care providers make every day for their patients.. . .
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