Improving Health Care Outcomes Through Personalized Comparisons of Treatment Effectiveness Based on Electronic Health Records

13 Pages Posted: 13 Sep 2011

See all articles by Sharona Hoffman

Sharona Hoffman

Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Andy Podgurski

Case Western Reserve University

Date Written: September 12, 2011

Abstract

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is one of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s significant initiatives that aims to improve treatment outcomes and lower health care costs. This Article takes CER a step further and suggests a novel clinical application for it. The Article proposes the development of a national framework to enable physicians to rapidly perform, through a computerized service, medically sound personalized comparisons of the effectiveness of possible treatments for patients’ conditions. A treatment comparison for a given patient would be based on data from electronic health records of a cohort of clinically similar patients who received the treatments previously and whose outcomes were recorded. This framework has unique potential to simultaneously improve the quality of health care, reduce its cost, and alleviate public concerns about rationing and “one size fits all” medicine.

Keywords: Electronic health records, Comparative effectiveness research, Health care outcomes, Health care innovations, Health care costs, Personalized comparison of treatment effectiveness, Personalized medicine, Medical informatics, Medical data integrity

JEL Classification: I18, K23, K32

Suggested Citation

Hoffman, Sharona and Podgurski, Andy, Improving Health Care Outcomes Through Personalized Comparisons of Treatment Effectiveness Based on Electronic Health Records (September 12, 2011). Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, Vol. 39, No. 3, p. 425, Case Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-24, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1926453

Sharona Hoffman (Contact Author)

Case Western Reserve University School of Law ( email )

11075 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH 44106-7148
United States
216-368-3860 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://sharonahoffman.com/

Andy Podgurski

Case Western Reserve University ( email )

10900 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44106
United States

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