In 2008, 33 million U.S. adults lived with a disabling condition, a number that is expected to grow in the coming years as the population ages. The costs for their health care are significant, with $400 billion, or almost 27 percent of the nation's total health care spending in 2006, going toward disability-related care. Yet many individuals lack the information they need to choose wisely among available treatments, and clinicians do not always have adequate medical evidence to inform their decisions. Furthermore, policymakers do not have the data to know which programs should continue or be revamped. The federal government began to address these gaps by allocating $1 billion through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for comparative effectiveness research (CER). The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), funded by the Affordable Care Act, is taking this investment one step further to build a research base for CER. This brief lays out four criteria to help researchers select and report on the outcomes that matter most to adults with disabilities and to the providers and others responsible for their care.
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