Prestigious Grants Awarded to Fomer INQRI Grantee Richard Mularski and INQRI NAC Member Elizabeth McGlynn

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) today announced 82 new funding awards supporting patient-centered comparative clinical effective research. Among the recipients are former INQRI grantee Richard Mularski and INQRI National Advisory Committee member Elizabeth McGlynn.

Mularski's grant is for a project to establish a foundation that combines an education, advocacy and support group created by and for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) with two federally funded research networks. The COPD Patient-Powered Research Network  will enroll 100,000 people with COPD in a registry to support patient-driven and patient-centered outcomes research.

McGlynn's grant will support a network of four leading health care delivery systems in collaborating with patients, clinicians, and operational leaders to a clinical data research network.The Patient Outcomes Research To Advance Learning (PORTAL) network will create cohorts of: (1) patients with a diagnosis of colorectal cancer; (2) adolescents and adults with severe congenital heart disease (CHD); and (3) adults who are overweight or obese, including those who have prediabetes or diabetes.Those cohorts will inform the PORTAL Network's efforts to advance the nation's ability to answer questions that are important to patients about what works best for whom under what circumstances and increase opportunities to translate research findings back into improvements in the delivery of health care.

PCORI and NIA Announce New Partnership on Fall Prevention

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) recently announced an agreement with the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to form a new partnership that will fund a major intervention study aimed at preventing injuries from falls in older adults. This agreement is the first step in the formation of the "Falls Injuries Prevention Partnership," which is the basis for developing an NIA-PCORI funding announcement for a large-scale, multi-year clinical trial on preventing injurious falls in non-institutionalized older individuals. PCORI plans to commit up to $30 million to this effort, though the final amount is yet to be determined. The NIA is in the process of developing a Funding Opportunity Announcement that is expected to be finalized in late July; further details will be available at that time. NIA has issued a Request for Information to gather insights from individual stakeholders and organizations involved in the care and well-being of older individuals.

The INQRI program has long been interested in this topic and has funded two recent studies designed to take a personal approach to fall prevention.  Led by Patti Dykes, one INQRI team has developed and tested a fall prevention tool kit using health information technology that successfully reduced the number of in-hospital falls among older patients. The tool kit includes a fall risk assessment, a patient-specific prevention plan, a handout for patients and their families and a poster to hang over a patient’s bed. INQRI also funded a team headed by Marita Titler to test fall prevention interventions tailored to patients’ risks for falls. This study involves three Michigan community hospitals which will implement processes to address multiple patient-specific factors that can contribute to and put patients at risk for falls, creating a “targeted risk factor fall prevention bundle” for each patient.

Click here to check out INQRI resources related to falls.
Click here to learn more about the PCORI-NIA partnership.

INQRI Grantee Appointed to PCORI Leadership Role

Congratulations to INQRI grantee Robin Newhouse, who was recently appointed to be the Vice-Chair of the Methodology Committee for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Newhouse has served on the Committee since its establishment by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in January 2011.

"Dr. Newhouse has demonstrated a tremendous commitment to improving the field of patient-centered outcomes research," said Committee Chair Sherine Gabriel, MD, MSc, Dean of Mayo Medical School. "We look forward to her continued leadership as we work to fulfill our legislative mandate to standardize and promote rigorous methods for research."

Click here for more information.

Update on PCORI's Funding Strategies

A new Health Affairs blog post details how PCORI is moving toward greater specificity in the research it will fund via two different approaches: a broad "investigator-initiated" process and a more directed "patient- and stakeholder-initiated" approach.

Click here to access the blog post on the PCORI website.

New PCORI Funding Opportunities

Assessment of Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options 

Purpose: In this PCORI Funding Announcement (PFA), we seek to fund projects that address critical decisions that face patients, their caregivers, and clinicians every day and with too little information. These decisions must be consequential, be occurring now without key evidence about the comparative effectiveness of two or more options, and patients/caregivers must benefit from new knowledge in ways that are clear and important. The premise of this research is that new knowledge will support critical choices by patients, caregivers, and their clinicians, not that it will deliver a verdict that will lead us to dictate a choice. This knowledge will provide insight about the comparative benefits and harms of the options and provide information about outcomes that are experienced by patients and important to patients.

Funds Available: We anticipate that approximately 54 contracts totaling up to $48 million in total costs may be funded under this PFA in this initial funding cycle, assuming receipt of a sufficient number of high quality applications. PCORI anticipates additional funding cycles related to this announcement. However, funds available may vary, and PCORI reserves the right to modify or terminate this announcement at any time.

Budget and Project Periods: Direct project costs are limited to a maximum of $500,000 per year.

Improving Healthcare Systems 

Synopsis: We are interested in the following broad topical areas:

• Research that compares alternative system-level approaches to supporting and improving patient access to care; receipt of appropriate evidence-based care; the quality, timeliness, and safety of the patient care experience; decision-making based on patients’ personal values; and self-care. Research that compares alternative approaches to models of care delivery or coordination of care across healthcare services or settings, including care for patients with complex, chronic, and/or multiple conditions, are of interest. The emphasis is on comparing approaches for their effect on patients and, when relevant, their caregivers, in ways that they experience and think are important. 
• Research that compares alternative system-level approaches that aim to improve the efficiency of health care delivery to patient populations. These may include efforts to reduce the use of ineffective or wasteful care, to reduce redundant and duplicative care, to shorten waiting times, or enhance the timeliness and quality of communications during referrals and transitions in care. 

Funds Available: We anticipate that approximately 27 contracts totaling up to $24 million in total costs may be funded under this PFA in this funding cycle, assuming receipt of a sufficient number of high quality applications. PCORI anticipates additional funding cycles related to this announcement. However, funds available may vary, and PCORI reserves the right to modify or terminate this announcement at any time.

Budget and Project Periods: Direct project costs are limited to a maximum of $500,000 per year.

LETTERS OF INTENT DUE OCTOBER 15
APPLICATIONS DUE DECEMBER 17

PCORI Seeks Comments

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is requesting input on two issues:

PCORI Translation Tool RFI - The PCORI Methodology Committee is inviting input on the translation framework components and to engage stakeholder communities in the development of PCORI’s translation tool. Responses are due by 5:00pm on February 17, 2012.

Comments Open on PCORI’s Research Priorities and Agenda - Comments are invited on the first draft of the PCORI National Priorities for Research and initial Research Agenda in advance of PCORI’s first funding announcements in May 2012. Responses are due by March 15, 2012.

PCORI Funding Announcement: Pilot Projects Grants

It is with great excitement that we share with you a funding announcement from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), which was established with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The purpose of this call for proposals is to further develop and enhance national research priorities for patient-centered care, collect preliminary data that can be used to advance the field of patient-centered outcomes research, and identify methodologies that can be used to advance patient-centered outcomes research as well as identify gaps where methodological research needs further development.

We would also like to note that INQRI grantee, Dr. Robin Newhouse, is a member of the Methodology committee for PCORI.

Click here to read more about the Pilot Project Grants.

Click here to read the full funding announcement.

INQRI Grantee Appointed to Methodology Committee of PCORI

We are pleased to share with all of you the appointment of Robin Newhouse PhD, RN, of the University of Maryland, to the Methodology Committee of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), stated the committees responsibilities include, "... helping PCORI develop and update methodological standards and guidance for comparative clinical effectiveness research."

Dr. Newhouse has continued to have a strong relationship with the INQRI program over the past five years as she is an alumnus of our second cohort and has recently began a new research study in our most current cohort.

Click here to read the full press release from the GAO.

Read more about Dr. Newhouse's prior INQRI project here.

Read more about Dr. Newhouse's current INQRI project here.