The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA) means the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and its $3.5 billion budget, can continue its mission to find the most effective medical treatments. Chief Justice John Roberts, siding with the more liberal-leaning justices, voted to keep the law intact, saving its many provisions, including PCORI. 

PCORI was established by Congress, through the ACA, as an independent research institute to study, compare and find the most effective medical interventions at treating certain ailments and conditions. The goal of the effort, known as comparative effectiveness research, is to ultimately give patients and health care providers the best information on what type of care a person should receive.

"With the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of the (ACA), (PCORI) will continue its planned efforts to fund research that will provide patients, caregivers and clinicians with the high-quality, trusted information they need to make better-informed health decisions," PCORI said in a statement.

PCORI had said the Supreme Court decision was out of their hands and it was focused on its mission.

“Congress provided us with a clear mandate to fund patient-centered and comparative clinical effectiveness research. We’re focused sharply on that work and we’re not distracted by issues that are out of our control," according to PCORI.

Earlier this month, PCORI gave 50 research institutions in 24 states and the District of Columbia funding, totaling $30 million over two years.

“These projects will improve our understanding of how to conduct research and disseminate research findings in ways that are more responsive to the needs of patients and the health care community,” PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby said in a written statement.

Among the projects that received money were:

  • The Illinois-based Rush University Medical Center’s CAPE: Patient-Centered Quality Assessment of Psychiatric Inpatient Environments project received $306,966. The project seeks to provide a nationally recognized guide for optimizing “patient-centered care” in inpatient psychiatric settings and predict outcomes of psychiatric care.
  • The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences received $604,301 for its Addressing Mental Health Needs of Rural African Americans project, which aims to gather information that can help improve the approach and delivery of care to the rural African-American community in the Arkansas Delta.
  • The Regents of the University of California is conducting a project that will characterize how health coaches, as members of a patient’s primary care team, help patients make more informed decisions. The project Health Team Support for Patient Informed Decision Making received $674,770.

For more information on the projects, visit PCORI’s funded pilot projects page, http://www.pcori.org/pilot-projects/.

PCORI is funded through the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund, which was created by the ACA. The fund is estimated to receive $3.5 billion through 2019 from two sources: the general fund of the U.S. Treasury Department and Medicare ($2 fees for each Medicare beneficiary are transferred each year from the Medicare Trust Fund to PCORI).

Its budget for the first 3 years, through 2012, totals $210 million, and increases to approximately $350 million in 2013, wrote A. Eugene Washington, M.D., and Steven H. Lipstein, M.H.A., two members of PCORI’s board of governors, in the New England Journal of Medicine. The funding will increase to $500 million annually for 2014 through 2019.