(Washington) -- "The American College of Physicians (ACP) strongly supports Congressional efforts to provide Medicare and all stakeholders within the health care community with improved access to information about the relative strengths and weaknesses of various clinical products, procedures and services," David C. Dale, MD, FACP, president of the ACP, told the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health today. Dr. Dale testified at a subcommittee hearing, Strategies to Increase Research and Information on Comparative Clinical Effectiveness. "In order to reach the goal," Dr. Dale told the subcommittee, "ACP recommends that the Congress take efforts, including the allocation of secure and sustained funding, to create or support a trusted entity that systematically develops evidence on the relative effectiveness of various alternative healthcare services."

That entity, he said, should have the following characteristics:

• it should be an unbiased independent entity protected from both governmental and private sector influence to encourage trust in its findings.
• its proceedings should be transparent.
• it should involve stakeholders, including payers, providers and beneficiaries, at all levels of the evidence development process.
• it should have a prioritization process, informed by input from the stakeholder groups, that ensures that the comparative effective evidence developed will have the greatest impact in improving the quality and efficiency of care provided.
• it should support the development of all levels of evidence including formal review and synthesis of evidence already available in the clinical literature and the initiation of new research in priority areas where such evidence does not already exist.

• it should have established processes that ensures that the comparative effectiveness findings developed are accessible in a comprehensive form to all stake holders.