Abstract
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 mandates a national comparative outcomes research project agenda. Comparative effectiveness research includes both clinical trials and observational studies and is facilitated by electronic health records. A national network of electronic health records will create a vast electronic data “warehouse” with exponential growth of observational data. High-quality associations will identify research topics for pragmatic clinical trials, and systematic reviews of clinical trials will provide optimal evidence-based medicine. Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. Thus, health care reform will provide a robust environment for comparative effectiveness research, systematic reviews, and evidence-based medicine, and implementation of evidence-based medicine should lead to improved quality of care.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
