PATIENTS: PATient-centered Involvement in Evaluating effectivNess of Treatment

University Of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): Incorporating patients' perspectives can improve healthcare research and delivery. When patients are included in healthcare research, they are empowered to ask and receive relevant answers to questions they have about their health. Patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) is designed to provide meaningful evidence that enables informed healthcare decision making by patients and other stakeholders. The University of Maryland (UM) is applying the concept of continuous patient engagement to a long history of successful community based participatory research to propose an innovative approach to PATient-centered Involvement in Evaluating the effectiveNess of Treatments (PATIENTS). PATIENTS is designed to enhance existing UM infrastructure to: (1) Foster sustainable partnerships with local, regional, and national communities of diverse patients and healthcare systems to improve PCOR, investigators' cultural competency and, ultimately, health outcomes; (2) Conduct and expand PCOR in partnership with patients and healthcare delivery systems that will better inform patient-centered health care decision making and healthcare systems design; and (3) Advance dissemination and implementation strategies for PCOR findings for patients, health care providers, and healthcare systems to utilize evidence-based interventions. A major focus of PATIENTS will be to select health outcomes and comparator interventions that matter to diverse patients or their surrogates, address the applicability and feasibility of PCOR across healthcare systems, and accelerate adoption of effective interventions through implementation science. The cornerstone of the PATIENTS program is UM, including the Baltimore (UMB) and College Park (UMCP) campuses, the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) and related clinics and hospitals within the UM network; however, it is the inclusion of diverse patient communities and healthcare systems into the infrastructure that will ensure meaningful stakeholder involvement. Four individual investigator research projects support the development of the PCOR infrastructure and add to the sustainability of partnerships.