Background: The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (the National Alliance) is a recognized leader in driving change in health and healthcare issues that matter most to employers. Since 2017, the National Alliance has been successfully disseminating PCORI-funded findings to its regional coalitions and their employer members that has resulted in expanded awareness and uptake of patient-centered outcomes research/comparative clinical effectiveness research (PCOR/CER) findings within this key stakeholder group.

The problem remains: employers are the main providers of health care for over 180 mil lives ($4.5B) and continue to be a primary source of funding for PCORI, but still, employers have not consistently utilized PCOR/CER research-focused evidence in their healthcare planning. However, even though this gap still exists, through continuous dissemination work, the project team has built a stronger bridge between the employers’ and PCORI-funded study findings and believe it is imperative to build on this work. The project team anticipates this initiative will show even greater success due to the strategically advantageous position they have established across the employer stakeholder community and several new methodologies that are showing greater and greater uptake of PCOR/CER by their employer community members.

Proposed Solution to the Problem: The project team proposes to continue their approach of ‘Integration’ and build on previous successes. From each dissemination campaign, they have learned how to better engage employers and will utilize those insights in this award cycle through this continued integrative approach. The project team will not just share new research findings, but rather begin with topics and priorities important to employers and fold the research findings into these priorities.

Objectives: The main objective is to educate and inform healthcare benefits professionals of relevant PCORI-funded research findings, guiding them to enhance their current practices towards a stronger evidence-based approach in their healthcare decision making.

The project aims to:

• Successfully implement five dissemination campaigns that highlight key priorities for employers, including a full evaluation of each
• Track the downstream impact of employer engagement through feedback from the expanded Advisory Council, including employers and patient advocates, and other evaluation methods including the PCORI-required Evaluation Tool
• Devote one quarter per year to update the current National Alliance PCORI-focused web portal that will include a resource library that is organized and searchable by healthcare topic. The library will include all aspects of campaigns including recordings of live webinars, podcasts, downloadable Action Brief publications, and patient- (employee-) facing materials formatted for direct access and distribution of the interested users.

Activities: The planned ‘Integration’ methods include:

• Aligning findings with industry trends and organizational initiatives
• Deepening partnerships with stakeholders
• Leveraging trusted tools and resources
• Updating the current portal to become a robust online resource library
• Developing a sustainable downstream tracking method

Projected Outcomes and Outputs:

Short-term outcomes during the project period:

• The completion of a comprehensive Evaluation Report compiled from dissemination engagement surveys looking at the performance and effectiveness of campaigns from a multi-faceted pool of participants
• The completion of an Evaluation Report compiled from Advisory Council engagement, including:
  • Feedback from surveys evaluating the project approach
  • Reports on real-time healthcare planning practices comparing their actual needs to the relevance of project materials
  • Downstream tracking data on utilization of dissemination materials provided through the project team’s employer council representatives
  • End-user feedback from the Patient Advocates who will serve on the council

Medium-term outcomes (0-2 years post-project period): Creation of a web-based Resource Library

• Establish a searchable digital resource library organizing all the campaign materials according to topics, making it accessible to a wide spectrum of stakeholders who may benefit from flexible and continual access to these resources

Long-term outcomes (3+ years post-project period): To further build on the integration of evidence-based decision-making into employer healthcare strategies where PCORI and other healthcare research will continue to become a more valuable, trusted, and highly utilized resource to improve patient-centered outcomes. The project team will look to their evaluation reports to understand progress at the end of the project.

Patient and Stakeholder Engagement Plan/Project Collaborators: The primary stakeholder group in this project is represented by regional coalition leaders and their employer members who are located across the country and representative of employers within their regions. In addition, an Advisory Council of coalition leaders, employers, and patient advocates will continue to build on the 2020 agenda focused the effectiveness of dissemination campaigns and how employers are able to best utilize the disseminated findings. Lastly, campaign participants comprised of regional coalitions and their employer members will have the opportunity to engage in all campaigns, participate in a performance evaluation survey, and provide additional learnings and insights as appropriate.