Beyond Causality: Additional Benefits of Randomized Controlled Trials for Improving Health Care Delivery.
Milbank Q
; 99(4): 864-881, 2021 12.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1319215
ABSTRACT
Policy Points Policymakers at federal and state agencies, health systems, payers, and providers need rigorous evidence for strategies to improve health care delivery and population health. This is all the more urgent now, during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, especially among low-income communities and communities of color. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are known for their ability to produce credible causal impact estimates, which is why they are used to evaluate the safety and efficacy of drugs and, increasingly, to evaluate health care delivery and policy. But RCTs provide other benefits, allowing policymakers and researchers to 1) design studies to answer the question they want to answer, 2) test theory and mechanisms to help enrich understanding beyond the results of a single study, 3) examine potentially subtle, indirect effects of a program or policy, and 4) collaborate closely to generate policy-relevant findings. Illustrating each of these points with examples of recent RCTs in health care, we demonstrate how policymakers can utilize RCTs to solve pressing challenges.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
/
Delivery of Health Care
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Milbank Q
Journal subject:
Social Medicine
/
Public Health
/
Health Services
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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