Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: Evolution, Definition, and Implications
“Comparative Effectiveness Research” and “Patient Centered Outcomes Research” (PCOR) are interchangeable terms that our readers will invariably encounter over the next several years. PCOR seems to have been born at the time of the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of the 1970s and 1980s, and has matured through legislation including the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which established the Effective Health Care Program at the Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ); the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) which allocated $1.1 billion for PCOR; (Read more...)