BACKGROUND The $1.1 billion investment in comparative effectiveness research will reshape the evidence-base supporting decisions about treatment effectiveness, safety, and cost. Defining the current prevalence and characteristics of comparative effectiveness (CE) research will enable future assessments of the impact of this program. METHODS We conducted an observational study of clinical tria...

background: for treatment of severe alcohol withdrawal syndrome, high dose benzodiazepines (bzds) may cause delirium and over-sedation. phenobarbital (pbt) is a long-acting barbiturate effective for the treatment of alcohol withdrawal. given the potential benefits of pbt, we sought to investigate the effectiveness of pbt as adjunctive treatment for alcohol withdrawal. methods: this was a retros...

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has launched PCORnet, a major initiative to support an effective, sustainable national research infrastructure that will advance the use of electronic health data in comparative effectiveness research (CER) and other types of research. In December 2013, PCORI's board of governors funded 11 clinical data research networks (CDRNs) and 18 pa...

The panel addresses the urgent need to ensure that comparative effectiveness research (CER) findings derived from diverse and distributed data sources are based on credible, high-quality data; and that the methods used to assess and report data quality are consistent, comprehensive, and available to data consumers. The panel consists of representatives from four teams leveraging electronic clin...

BACKGROUND The Comprehensive Post-Acute Stroke Services (COMPASS) Study is one of the first large pragmatic randomized-controlled clinical trials using comparative effectiveness research methods, funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. In the COMPASS Study, we compare the effectiveness of a patient-centered, transitional care intervention versus usual care for stroke patient...

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) has received substantial attention as a potential approach for improving health outcomes while lowering costs of care, and for improving the relevance and quality of clinical and health services research. The Institute of Medicine defines CER as 'the conduct and synthesis of systematic research comparing different interventions and strategies to prevent,...

PURPOSE Because of an increasing demand for quality comparative effectiveness research (CER), methods guidance documents have been published, such as those from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Our objective was to identify CER methods guidance documents and compare them to produce a summary of important recommen...