2009-06-18

Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) and Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) introduced legislation on June 9 to establish a private entity responsible for advancing comparative effectiveness research (CER).

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Act of 2009 (S. 1213) would create a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which would be responsible for identifying national priorities for CER. Such research would account for a variety of factors, including disease prevalence and burden, practice variations, and the potential for "an effect on health expenditures" and "patient needs, outcomes, and preferences, including quality of life." The bill directs the Institute to establish a research agenda and "provide for" CER (both in-house and on a contract basis). Additionally, the Institute would appoint expert advisory panels that include practicing and research clinicians to "ensure that ... such research is clinically relevant to ... clinicians and patients at the point of care." A special trust fund, which would be financially supported by transfers from the Medicare Trust Funds and fees on private health plans, would support the Institute's activities.

Senator Baucus has also repeatedly emphasized that he intends to incorporate CER into health reform legislation that the Senate Finance Committee will begin considering the week of June 15.

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