The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute is a United States-based non-profit institute created through the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It is a government-sponsored organization charged with funding comparative effectiveness research that assists consumers, clinicians, purchasers, and policy makers to make informed decisions intended to improve health care at both the individual and population levels, according to the Institute of Medicine. Medicare considers the Institute's research in determining what sorts of therapies it will cover, although the institute’s authorizing legislation set certain limits on uses of the research by federal health agencies.
Funding
PCORI is funded through the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund, which was authorized by the United States Congress as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and reauthorized through the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020. Its annual income comes from the general fund of the U.S. Treasury and a small fee assessed on Medicare, private health insurance, and self-insured plans. The Act mandates a $2 fee, adjusted for inflation, for each person covered on a group plan. In 2018, PCORI's revenue was $506,485,458 dollars with approved research awards of $308,000,000. It made about $2 billion in commitments for funding awards between 2010 and 2017. About $1.6 billion through fiscal 2017 was for research awards, while $325 million was to build the capacity to use existing health data for research.
Research
PCORI funds research studies that focus on patient-centered outcomes, rather than only on comparative effectiveness research alone. Patient-centered outcomes research involves questions and outcomes that are "meaningful and important to patients and caregivers" in order to help those individuals make informed decisions for their own care. As of 2019, there have been 65 research standards developed to support patient-centered outcomes research. PCORI's authorizing legislation requires it "to guarantee peer review of all research results and to make those results publicly accessible within 90 days of their receipt."
PCORnet
Funding from PCORI enabled the development of PCORnet, a collaboration of several networks that support research using health data collected in the course of care through electronic health records, claims, and from patients. It established and maintains a common data model that allows analysis across many sites.
