Thursday, March 02, 2023

UH joins 41 other U.S. health systems to carry out multi-year PCORI-funded initiative

CLEVELAND -- The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) tapped University Hospitals (UH) as one of 42 health systems nationwide to carry out a pioneering initiative to accelerate the implementation of practice-changing research results in clinical care to improve patients’ outcomes.
 
As a participant in PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII), UH will bring its on-the-ground experience and expertise in health care delivery to bear to develop and implement viable strategies to adopt actively new evidence. The ultimate goal is to cut the estimated 17-year lag between publication of research results that have been shown to improve patients’ outcomes and their widespread uptake in health care practice.
 
“At University Hospitals, we’ve made great strides in aligning our organization and culture to maximize value for our patients and in advancing our goal of Zero Harm in all domains – zero physical harm, zero suffering, zero inequities and zero waste,” said Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, FCCM, UH Chief Quality and Clinical Transformation Officer, Veale Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Clinical Transformation, University Hospitals. “Our participation in the Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII) of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will help us continue along this important journey. One key benefit for our patients will be our ability to engage and collaborate with other health care leaders in the initiative. These connections will help us conduct more rigorous evaluation of the ways we’re innovating to improve patient care and getting interventions that work to our patients in a more timely way. As we all know, health care costs too much, harms too often and improves too slowly. However, by building our capabilities at UH in design and analysis, we hope to improve more quickly for our patients and share what we learn more broadly.”
 
HSII participating health systems have the opportunity to prepare proposals for capacity building projects in the first stage of the initiative. Each participating health system can receive up to $500,000 for a project in this initial stage that supports preparation for future implementation strategies. A second HSII funding opportunity will support practical and innovative projects that promote uptake of specific evidence from PCORI-funded research studies within the health systems, with funds ranging from $500,000 to $5 million per implementation project.
 
In addition, through the HSII Learning Network, UH and other participants will share experiences and learn from one another about best practices for implementation, evaluation metrics, and other topics integral to successful implementation of care-informing strategies. Through the network, participants will provide input to PCORI on topics and specific PCORI-funded findings of interest for future implementation projects.
 
HSII participants collectively represent 800 hospitals serving 79 million unique patients—nearly a quarter of the U.S. population—across 41 states and the District of Columbia. In addition to health systems like UH, they include academic medical centers, community-based systems, integrated healthcare delivery and finance systems, safety net health systems, faith-based systems, public health care delivery systems and a medical center within the Veterans Health Administration. See the full list on PCORI’s website.
 
“We welcome the opportunity to work with UH and the other health systems participating in this groundbreaking initiative that will leverage their knowledge and experience to facilitate practice change and improve care based on results of PCORI-funded research,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook, MD, MPH. “The HSII participants’ efforts will lay the groundwork for future expansion and broader implementation by demonstrating pathways to uptake and sharing lessons learned across health systems.”
 
HSII is part of a portfolio of PCORI-funded efforts that aim to improve the awareness, uptake and use of results from patient-centered comparative effectiveness research. PCORI is an independent, non-profit organization that funds comparative clinical effectiveness research, which provides patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work.