PCORI Board Adopts Strategic Plan, Approves 2014 Budget and Advisory Panel Charters, Accepts Revised Methodology Report

ATLANTA, Ga. (Nov. 18, 2013) – The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors today approved PCORI’s strategic plan and a Fiscal Year 2014 budget along with a resolution for PCORI to commit up to $1.03 billion in research funding over the next two fiscal years.

In addition, the Board at its latest meeting here today approved the charters for two new advisory panels, one on rare disease and the other on clinical trials. And it accepted the revised version of the PCORI Methodology Report, which provides a roadmap for conducting scientifically rigorous comparative clinical effectiveness research centered on questions and results that matter most to patients and other end-users of research results.

The Board approved a proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget that includes $182 million in expenditures and up to $528 million in research funding commitments. PCORI can commit far more in research support because funds for multi-year studies will be paid out incrementally over several years. The Board’s vote on the funding commitment level gives the institute the flexibility to approve funding for a range of high-quality comparative effectiveness research studies.

“Our budget for 2014 and our funding plan for the next two years represent ambitious but achievable plans to grow our portfolio of rigorous patient-centered comparative effectiveness research in the near future,” said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. “We hope to fund a greater number of larger, longer studies, including large pragmatic trials, to answer critical questions that will help patients and those who care for them make better-informed health and healthcare decisions.”

The newly adopted strategic plan is a guiding framework for PCORI’s next several years of efforts to advance patient-centered outcomes research. It lays out three strategic goals and the steps necessary to achieve them. The goals are to:

• Substantially increase the quantity, quality, and timeliness of useful, reliable evidence to improve healthcare decision making
• Speed the implementation and use of findings from patient-centered outcomes research
• Influence clinical and healthcare research funded by others to be more patient-centered.

The steps PCORI will take to achieve these goals include engaging patients and other stakeholders in the entire research process, developing and promoting rigorous research methodology standards, funding patient-centered CER, disseminating the results across the healthcare community, and facilitating sustainable infrastructure for conducting this research.

“PCORI’s strategic plan will serve as an invaluable guide to both produce a growing portfolio of high-quality, useful patient-centered outcomes research and develop practices that will help others do the same,” said Board Chair Grayson Norquist, MD, MSPH, Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Miss. “We plan to revisit and refine this plan over time and welcome input from patients, family caregivers, clinicians, and others across the entire health community.”

With the Board’s approval of charters for a new Advisory Panel on Rare Disease and Advisory Panel on Clinical Trials, both required by PCORI’s authorizing legislation, PCORI will begin to plan the open application process to seek potential members for each. More information on the application process will be available soon on the advisory panels page on PCORI’s website. The new panels will meet for the first time in the spring of 2014.

Each of the new panels will be made up of individuals with the appropriate expertise as outlined by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, PCORI’s authorizing legislation. People with rare diseases, their caregivers, and representatives of rare disease advocacy groups, will make up at least a third of the Advisory Panel on Rare Disease members.  Moreover, the panel members will help PCORI identify experts to serve on condition-specific ad hoc advisory panels to provide additional expert input on specific potential research studies.

The revised PCORI Methodology Report addresses the strategic imperative of promoting rigorous standards. The report, which provides context for a set of methodology standards adopted by PCORI’s Board in late 2012, was extensively revised based on public comments to an earlier draft. PCORI’s Methodology Committee and staff are pursuing a variety of efforts to encourage the adoption of the report and standards.