Children’s Selected to Participate in a Groundbreaking Initiative to Accelerate Uptake of Practice-changing Evidence in Healthcare

ATLANTA (March 8, 2023) – Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has been tapped by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) as one of 42 health systems nationwide to carry out a pioneering initiative to accelerate the implementation of practice-changing research results in clinical care to improve patients’ outcomes.

As a participant in PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII), Children’s will bring its on-the-ground experience in healthcare delivery to develop and implement viable strategies to actively adopt new evidence. The ultimate goal is to cut the estimated 17-year lag between publication of research results that have been shown to improve patients’ outcomes and their widespread uptake in health care practice.

“This initiative will put Children’s at the forefront of promoting evidence-based care for kids,” said Evan Orenstein, MD, Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Vice President of Data Analytics at Children’s, as well as the Principal Investigator for this initiative along with Srikant Iyer, MD, Chief Quality Officer. “Quality improvement (QI) projects so often are done in silos, limiting their effectiveness and total impact. This learning collaborative will work to accelerate Children’s improvement efforts while expanding the reach and impact of Children’s successful QI programs through broader dissemination.”

Through the HSII Learning Network, Children’s and other participants will share experiences and learn from one another about best practices for implementation, evaluation metrics, and other topics integral to successful implementation of care-informing strategies. Through the network, participants will provide input to PCORI on topics and specific PCORI-funded findings of interest for future implementation projects.

HSII participants collectively represent 800 hospitals serving 79 million unique patients—nearly a quarter of the U.S. population—across 41 states and the District of Columbia. In addition to health systems like Children’s they include academic medical centers, community-based systems, integrated healthcare delivery and finance systems, safety net health systems, faith-based systems, public health care delivery systems and a medical center within the Veterans Health Administration.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and the other health systems participating in this groundbreaking initiative that will leverage their knowledge and experience to facilitate practice change and improve care based on results of PCORI-funded research,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook, M.D., M.P.H. “The HSII participants’ efforts will lay the groundwork for future expansion and broader implementation by demonstrating pathways to uptake and sharing lessons learned across health systems.”

HSII is part of a portfolio of PCORI-funded efforts that aim to improve the awareness, uptake and use of results from patient-centered comparative effectiveness research. PCORI is an independent, non-profit organization that funds comparative clinical effectiveness research, which provides patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work.