Mark Helfand MD, MS, MPH, and Brian Mittman, PhD, have been appointed by the GAO Comptroller General to serve on the Methodology Committee of the newly-created Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
With the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the PCORI was authorized as a non-profit corporation designed to assist patients, clinicians, purchasers, and policymakers in making informed health decisions by providing relevant quality evidence on how best to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor diseases and other health conditions.
Dr. Helfand is Director of the VA Evidence-Based Synthesis Program's Coordination Center, a staff physician with the Portland VA Medical Center, and is a Professor of Medicine, Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University. He has been a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Standards for Systematic Reviews of Comparative Effectiveness Research, and is Editor-in-Chief of Medical Decision Making.
Dr. Mittman is Director of the VA Center for Implementation Practice and Research Support, and a Senior Social Scientist at the VA HSR&D Center for the Study of Healthcare Provider Behavior. He also serves as Co-Editor in Chief of the journal Implementation Science. He was a founding member of the Institute of Medicine Forum on the Science of Health Care Quality Improvement and Implementation.
To learn more about the new PCORI Methodology Committee or its recently appointed members, read the GAO's official press release.