Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER)

MISSION: The Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights seeks to ensure that comparative effectiveness research (CER) is used to promote sound medical information for patients and doctors, so they can choose the medical treatment that best suits each individual patient.  CER should not be used by the government as a cost-saving mechanism that could deny life-saving or life-enhancing care.  Additionally, patient-centered CER will continue to promote new medical technology and innovation leading to the promise of new cures and treatments giving us all longer, healthier, happier lives. Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) has great potential to keep the public informed about new treatments that work well. When CER is conducted effectively, it will educate patients and the medical community about the best possible course of medical treatment for a particular ailment or injury.  It will also foster continued medical innovation that will create the new drugs, devices and procedures that will enhance and save lives in the future. Many Americans, however, are rightfully concerned that the government will use CER as a cost-saving mechanism and, consequently, deny essential treatment to patients.  CPPR works to ensure that this does not become the case.  

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was a positive step towards ensuring patient centeredness in CER. The law contains strong measure meant to encourage transparency in CER and calls for the creation of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a non-government entity charged with setting research priorities for CER trials, allocating funds, and communicating results to the public in a clear and comprehensible manner. The Institute will be run by a diverse board of stakeholders, including patients and doctors.

While the creation of this Institute will undoubtedly help make sure CER stays focused on patients, we will closely monitor CER in the United States, protecting patients’ rights by making certain that research efforts are used only for their benefit and never to deny care.