PCORI Frequently Asked Questions

Gaps exist in existing channels to disseminate PCOR and CER results. Research shows that there are many opportunities for accelerating the pace of translating research into practice, including:

  • Improving the level of engagement of patients and clinicians
  • Using respected individual and organizational clinical champions for change
  • Synthesizing key research findings into practical tools that are geared to more readily support practice change
  • Linking research findings with established quality improvement methods and on-the-ground assistance for change.

PCOR, Patient Centered Outcomes Research, and CER, Comparative Effectiveness Research, are types of research with the specific requirement that stakeholders and patients be involved effectively throughout the research process.

CER is focused on the informing of healthcare decisions by providing evidence on the effectiveness, benefits, and harms of different treatment options, and such evidence is primarily quantitative.1 CER researchers compare drugs, devices, test, surgeries, healthcare delivery methods and behavioral interventions.

PCOR includes research not focused solely on comparison of treatments, but also on broader aspects of patient centered healthcare delivery such as quality of care and dissemination of health information. 2

PCPCC has been award a Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award to build a dissemination infrastructure.

The Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award program, names in honor of the first chair of PCORI’s Board of Governors, aims to include patients, caregivers, clinicians and other health care stakeholders in the process.

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) was created with the passage of the Affordable Care Act to fund that can help patients and those who care for them make better-informed healthcare choices.

PCORI’s goal is to support projects that build communities to serve as channels for disseminating study results. Building communities through engagement is how comparative effectiveness research will help patients and those who care for them make better-informed healthcare decisions.

PCORI believes in bringing together all healthcare stakeholders, with patients at the center, to help set research priorities and evaluate applications, is PCORI’s formula for ensure they fund and conduct the most relevant research. PCORI believes in the inclusion of patients and other stakeholders in the research process, will lead to trustworthy and usable information likely to be taken up in practice.

Learn more about PCORI-funded research results and PCORI’s dissemination and translation work.

See how the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) invests in dissemination of PCOR.

Check out the PCOR Trust Fund’s portfolio of intradepartmental PCOR projects at HHS.

PCORI Project
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