Mission is to empower public with health-care knowledge

WashingtonPost  Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute's board.
If you're not familiar with the PCORI board, you're not alone. Created by the health-care overhaul law, it's one of the newest and least known panels in government. But the work of its 21 members, if successful, could increase the public's knowledge of medical treatments for everything from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder to cancer. And it could dramatically change how you discuss treatments with your doctor when the law is fully implemented in 2014. "I was very excited," said Lipstein, president and chief executive of BJC HealthCare in St. Louis, which operates 13 hospitals with more than 26,000 employees.

According to the legislation, the PCORI will act as a non-profit organization to assist patients, clinicians, purchasers, and policy-makers in making informed health decisions by carrying out research projects that provide quality, relevant evidence on how diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, monitored, and managed.

Learn more:

• The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [Section 6301 and Section 10602, Public Law 111-148],
  
• Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
• Government Accountability Office (GAO) announcement of the 2010 appointments to the PCORI Board.
  
• Biographies of these individuals are located at the bottom of the GAO press release.