Cross design synthesis : a new strategy for medical effectiveness research : report to Congressional requesters / United States General Accounting Office.

  • United States. General Accounting Office.
Date:
[1992]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cross design synthesis : a new strategy for medical effectiveness research : report to Congressional requesters / United States General Accounting Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Xfce S) GAO United States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 Program Evaluation and Methodology Division B-244808 March 17, 1992 The Honorable George J. Mitchell Majority Leader United States Senate The Honorable John Glenn Chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs United States Senate The Honorable David Pryor Chairman, Special Committee on Aging United States Senate The Honorable William S. Cohen Ranking Minority Member Special Committee on Aging United States Senate In December 1989, the Congress established the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) in an effort to improve the quality of health care afforded the American public. As an accompaniment to this action, you asked us to initiate a series of studies that would assist AHCPR with its mission and, most particularly, with determining the effectiveness of medical interventions. We have already provided you with the results of two of these studies: (1) an examination of the obstacles AHCPR is likely to face in obtaining data on effectiveness and (2) a review of the methods medical specialty societies have used in the past to develop medical practice guidelines, based on whatever was known about treatment effectiveness. In this report, we assess ways to determine how well medical treatments actually work, and we present a new strategy for medical effectiveness research. This strategy, which we call “cross design synthesis,” represents an important step in advancing knowledge about the effectiveness of medical treatments, based not only on the results of randomized clinical trials but also on data reflecting wide experience in the field.