A new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago reports that patients can get significant savings and better outcomes from their prescription drugs when doctors/health care professionals use comparative effectiveness research, that is, evaluating different options for treating a medical condition among a particular group of patients.
"Despite having the highest per capita health care expenditures in the world, the United States does not always perform well on measures of health compared with other countries," said Glen Schumock, associate professor and director of the UIC Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research. Schumock also said the medical community needs to know more about how drugs compare to one another in terms of effectiveness, safety and value. It makes sense, then, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, approved by President Obama, has set aside more than $1 billion for comparative effectiveness research.
The report appears in the online version (Volume 66, 2009) of American Journal of Health-Systems Pharmacy.
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