SYNTHESIS OF HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH FOR POLICY MAKERS

Academyhealth, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The Academy would conduct a small working conference through a two- stage process to convene key experts to discus how to increase the policy relevance of health services research. A concrete outcome of the conference will be four specific scopes of work that can be used to synthesize behavioral science health services research into forms that can be disseminated to public and private policy and decision makers. The proposed conference would focus on an important subfield within the health services research portfolio, namely, behavioral responses to changes in health care financing and organization Although this excludes other important areas of health services research including those that focus on outcomes, quality measurement, patient safety, and technology we believe that the purpose and structure of the proposed conference could be generalized to these other areas. Through a planning meeting, commissioned papers, the working conference, and final report, the Academy would: (1) delineate a menu of potential current public policy topics for which health services research if and when appropriately synthesized could quickly contribute important insights; (2) identify four topics of high current policy relevance; (3) identify the sources of literature to be used for syntheses on the chosen topics; (4) identify high priority target audiences for the selected synthesis candidates; (5) identify media (such as the Internet, briefing papers, oral briefing, etc.) most appropriate to the dissemination of the chosen syntheses; (6) identify experts to write the chosen syntheses; and (7) for each topic, summarized in a final report the recommendations of the conference participants. The report would provide: a background statement; a policy context for the syntheses; an approach to gathering literature, examples of literature and of sources of literature to be synthesized; major issues pertinent to the synthesis; types of experts who could read and synthesize the literature; target audiences; a general description of the media through which the synthesis would be disseminated; a potential disseminators of the synthesis. Participants would evaluate the degree to which the conference met its goals and would be encouraged to provide feedback on how the process could be done better in the future. Finally, participants suggests how to obtain public or private support for the next step-to actually do the synthesis and translate them into an appropriate format for dissemination to the appropriate audiences. The Academy has secured some additional support through The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Changes in health Care Financing Organization (HCFO) program.