IMPROVING THE USE OF INFORMATION IN MEDICAL EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH

There is increased emphasis on improving the quality of health care by obtaining and disseminating information about the effectiveness and o utcomes of care and by facilitating more consumer input participation in decision-making. We examine barriers to information use and the cha llenges that these barriers pose for effectiveness research. We divide our discussion into four goals of effectiveness research, These are: (1) to provide more information so that consumers, providers and polic ymakers can make ''rational'' decisions; (2) to incorporate patient pr eferences into health care decisions; (3) to develop guidelines that i ncorporate both individual perspectives and societal perspectives; (4) to use information to improve the practice of health care. We discuss four recommendations for improving the use of information: (1) the ev idence on how people actually make decisions should be used to inform the design and implementation of effectiveness research; (2) decision- making should be structured through guidelines and policies; (3) crite ria should be developed for determining which guidelines should fully incorporate patient preferences; (4) safeguards should be established to guard against misuse of information.