Newswise — The PhRMA Foundation announced today the recipients of $1.3 million in funding for the development of transformative strategies to better assess the value of medicines and health care services while improving patient outcomes and reducing inefficiency in health care.

Funding will establish two national value-assessment Centers of Excellence and support the work of several researchers focused on value-based health care.

Concern over rising U.S. health care costs in recent years has increased interest in promoting high-quality care, while avoiding low value or inefficient care. In response, a number of initiatives aiming to drive value in health care have emerged, but few offer transformative solutions that reflect patient preferences and real-world clinical practice. In addition, many issues in methodology and patient engagement remain unresolved. The PhRMA Foundation launched its Value Assessment Initiative last year to help address these issues.

“Today’s announcement underscores our sector’s commitment to rigorous, patient-centered solutions for improving care value,” said PhRMA Foundation President Eileen Cannon. “As the U.S. health care system shifts to value-driven decision-making, it is important that information on the value of health care interventions be robust, transparent and address the needs of all health care stakeholders, including patients, payers and providers. We are proud to be helping advance these goals in 2018 with these new awards.”

Center of Excellence Awards

As a part of its new Value Assessment Initiative, the Foundation will support two new Centers of Excellence that will promote research, innovation, and the development of tools and partnerships that advance value-driven decision making and patient-centered care models.

Centers of Excellence awardees include nonprofit health systems research and consulting organization Altarum (with its core partner, V-BID Health) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, each of which will establish centers to promote research, innovation, and the development of tools and partnerships that will advance value-driven decision making and patient-centered care models. The two organizations each have received grants of $500,000 to launch the centers.

Altarum and V-BID Health have announced that the mission of their Center of Excellence will be to “promote the pursuit of value in health care delivery in the U.S. by identifying high- and low-value clinical services, tracking the use of such services, helping to ensure that consumer preferences are incorporated in health care decisions. It will work with researchers to identify the strategies that lead to better value, such as health benefit designs that incentivize the use of high-value services and discourage the use of low-value services.”

The University of Maryland, Baltimore has announced that its Center of Excellence will be devoted to “promoting the inclusion of diversity in patient voices regarding the elements of value most important to patients.” The vision of the new center, to be based at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, is for “patients and other stakeholders, such as value framework developers and users, to co-produce reliable and meaningful value assessments to support patient-centered health care decision-making.” Research AwardsThe Foundation will also support the work of three leading national researchers whose work is impacting the development of new value-based care models in the United States.

Value Assessment Research awardees include Shelby D. Reed, PhD, of the Duke Clinical Research Institute; Josh J. Carlson, PhD, of the University of Washington; and Gillian Sanders Schmidler, PhD, of Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. All three researchers received one-year grants of $100,000 to advance their work related to value-based care and cost-effectiveness in health care.

Dr. Reed’s work will center on establishing value in cancer care; Dr. Carlson will focus on improving utility adjustment in cost-effectiveness models and their impact on model outcomes; and Dr. Sanders Schmidler will explore the impact of value-based care from multiple perspectives.

The Foundation has announced that it will again offer grants for value assessment research and Centers of Excellence in 2019. To learn more about the Foundation’s Value Assessment Initiative or how to apply for a 2019 award, please visit the Foundation's online Awards Page or call (202) 572-7756.

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About the PhRMA Foundation

The mission of the PhRMA Foundation is to support young scientists in disciplines important to the pharmaceutical industry by awarding them competitive research fellowships and grants at a critical decision point at the outset of their careers. For more than 50 years, the Foundation has been helping to build a larger pool of highly-trained, top-quality scientists to help meet the growing needs of scientific and academic institutions, government, and the research-intensive pharmaceutical industry. Since its founding, it has distributed more than $80 million to support scientific research. To learn more, please visit www.phrmafoundation.org.

 

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