The latter will be facilitated by, as stipulated in the health care law, appointment of a standing Methodology Committee. The IOM recently completed solicitation for “Tier 1” pilot project ideas and a request for applications will be forthcoming this fall (see www.pcori.org/images/Tier_1_Topics_Input_Release.pdf for more details).

To capitalize on the CER agenda, emergency physicians will need to push for research that is relevant to the specialty and ensure that new evidence, as it evolves, gets translated into practice.⁷

This will require an investment in human and scientific capital (at the institutional level and beyond) to both create the next generation of emergency medicine researchers and foster a culture that espouses individualized (and perhaps less profitable) decision-making.

A shared data infrastructure is but one example of how the emergency medicine community could work together to better understand, in a longitudinal fashion, how variations in outcome may relate to differential practice patterns and disparate patient substrates.

The commitment to CER will be lasting – all we need to do is seize the day.

References

1. Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. (Accessed Sept. 4, 2011, at www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/cer/cerannualrpt.pdf.)
2. Conway PH, Clancy C. Transformation of health care at the front line. JAMA 2009;301:763-5.
3. Sox HC. Comparative effectiveness research: a progress report. Ann. Intern. Med. 2010;153:469-72.
4. Sullivan P, Goldmann D. The promise of comparative effectiveness research. JAMA 2011;305:400-1.
5. Iglehart JK. Prioritizing comparative-effectiveness research – IOM recommendations. N. Engl. J. Med. 2009;361:325-8.
6. VanLare JM, Conway PH, Sox HC. Five next steps for a new national program for comparative-effectiveness research. N. Engl. J. Med. 2010;362:970-3.
7. Conway PH, Clancy C. Com­parative-effectiveness research – implications of the Federal Coordinating Council’s report. N. Engl. J. Med. 2009;361:328-30.

Dr. Levy is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of Clinical Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Wayne State University. He is also a member of ACEP’s Research Committee.

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