Effective Health Care Program
The Effective Health Care (EHC) Program partners with networks of researchers and clinical teams across North America, using input from stakeholders throughout the process of comparative effectiveness research, translation, dissemination, and implementation of research findings.
In 2010, AHRQ used funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to establish two important Program initiatives:
* Community Forum to improve and expand public and stakeholder engagement in AHRQ’s comparative effectiveness research and EHC Program. * Healthcare Horizon Scanning System to identify new and emerging issues for comparative effectiveness review investments.
These initiatives contribute to the work of these Program components:
* Individual investigators and their research groups at academic institutions and other research centers generate new evidence from original research. * The Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs) perform in depth reviews of existing evidence. * The DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions about Effectiveness) Research Network gathers new knowledge on specific treatments and health care services. * The Centers for Education & Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) conduct research and educate clinicians and consumers about drugs, biologicals, and medical devices. * The Scientific Resource Center provides scientific support for the EHC Program. * The John M. Eisenberg Center for Clinical Decisions and Communications Science organizes the research results into guides and tools that are useful to clinicians, health care policymakers, and patients. * The Stakeholder Group provides different perspectives on the EHC Program from individual members of the Group.
Having cancer and facing the agony of treatment is bad enough without also having to face the financial burdens of treatment. As this and many other reports show, financial toxicity can seriously impair the ability to meet other basic needs, and may even result in personal bankruptcy.
We do need some reassurance that the costs and adverse effects of the treatments are worth the benefits provided. We shouldnt use as our sole source of information an industry that might be reluctant to communicate the full downside of their treatments when that information might reduce their very lucrative profits.
Fortunately, we do have a good start on becoming more informed in our choices for health care. The Effective Health Care Program of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is providing us with comparative effectiveness and evidence-based research that can be very useful in our clinical decision making. However, we do need to move further forward and use this information to make coverage decisions, certainly to eliminate coverage of detrimental health care, and also to eliminate coverage of care that the overwhelming preponderance of information reveals is not beneficial.
We also need to negotiate the best pricing based on legitimate costs and fair profits, and begin to make decisions on tolerance thresholds for health care payments. Everyone would agree that we cant use our collective funds to pay say $10 million for a treatment program that would extend the life of one person by three weeks, but with the very high prices that are being introduced, we will have to begin to struggle with cost-effectiveness determinations at levels that we find to be tolerable.
Once we are armed with the very best information, we should use that to obtain the highest quality care thats feasible for each and every individual with health care needs. We should eliminate financial toxicity by providing first dollar coverage for not just cancer patients but for all patients who already have enough burdens heaped upon them without having to face onerous financial burdens as well.
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