Abstract :
Over the last five years, the field of outcomes and effectiveness research has focused on evaluating treatments for common illnesses. Its particular emphasis is the assessment of treatment impact on a broad set of outcomes important to patients, including symptom relief, functional status and health-related quality of life.
Much of the effort of the first generation outcomes research projects focused on evaluating the effectiveness of surgical interventions. In many cases, common surgical treatments have never been rigorously evaluated using the gold standard of randomized clinical trials. In the surgical area, the challenge for outcomes researchers is to develop persuasive preliminary evidence that argues for a trial that will evaluate the effectiveness of an established but untested treatment.
In the case of pharmaceutical therapy, the issues for outcomes research are more subtle and focus on the measurement of relative cost effectiveness of treatments emphasizing a broad range of patient outcomes. Hypertension is an excellent model for outcomes research since it holds the potential for comparing costs, risks and benefits of a wide variety of treatments. This presentation will explore the methods that can be used in addressing hypertension treatment from an outcomes perspective.
