Clinical Therapeutics
CHERP's secondary focus as a VA Center of Innovation is to improve the health and health care of Veterans through health services research that investigates the usage patterns, efficacy, comparative effectiveness, safety, value, and equity of clinical therapeutics (i.e., medications, devices, and procedures).
Projects
- Dual Use of Medications Partnered Evaluation Initiative (Gellad QUERI PEI)
- Identifying Risk Factors for New Persistent Opioid Use Among Veterans Following Treatment for Early-Stage Cancer (Schapira HSR&D PPO)
- Impact of COVID-19 on Drug Shortages (Suda AHRQ R01)
- Impact of the MISSION Act on Quality and Outcomes of Interventional Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery among Veterans (Groeneveld HSR&D IIR)
- Supporting the VA Center for Medication Safety in Implementation of a New Urgent Care Prescription Dashboard to Monitor the Safety of Medications Prescribed to Veterans through VA Community Care Urgent Care (Barrett QUERI ADIL)
- Use and Effectiveness of Infection Prophylaxis Strategies in a National Cohort of Patients with ANCA Vasculitis (C Thorpe NIAID R21)
Partnered Operational Projects in Clinical Therapeutics
- COVID-19 Vaccination Quality Improvement Project (Burkitt, VAPHS)
- Medication Safety Analyses (Zhao, PBM Center for Medication Safety)
Impact
Dr. Gellad's research demonstrating that receiving medications from multiple systems poses serious health risks led to a groundbreaking agreement with the CMS to integrate real-time, quarterly CMS data on prescriptions filled by Veterans in Medicare into VAMedSAFE's ongoing safety surveillance activities. With QUERI support, Dr. Gellad and his team are now partnering with VAMedSafe to develop and evaluate new QI tools that use these combined CMS/VA data to improve drug safety for Veterans.
In work derived from data originally sponsored by IIR 14-077, Dr. Groeneveld compared the use of percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) in VA and Medicare patients with acute coronary syndromes, demonstrating that it is increasingly common in both systems for PCIs to be coded for acute myocardial infarction. This may reflect increasing incentives on operators to code the reason for PCI as being high-acuity coronary disease, rather than chronic stable angina.
Dr. Barrett, a QUERI ADIL recipient, is partnering with VAMedSafe to evaluate which types of medications dispensed through VA Community Care Urgent Care (CCUC) pose safety risks for Veterans, evaluate whether there is variation in the safety of medications dispensed through CCUC by race, ethnicity, and gender, and support VAMedSAFE in the implementation of a new Urgent Care Prescription Dashboard to monitor the safety of medications prescribed to Veterans through VA CCUC.
National Leadership
Walid Gellad, MD, MPH
- Dr. Gellad's research demonstrating that receiving medications from multiple systems poses serious health risks led to a groundbreaking agreement with the CMS to integrate real-time, quarterly CMS data on prescriptions filled by Veterans in Medicare into VAMedSAFE's ongoing safety surveillance activities. With QUERI support, Dr. Gellad and his team are now partnering with VAMedSafe to develop and evaluate new QI tools that use these combined CMS/VA data to improve drug safety for Veterans.
- Dr. Gellad is on ORD Medication Safety and Effectiveness Collaboratory to coordinate observational studies related to COVID therapeutics.
- Dr. Gellad was featured in major media (e.g., WSJ, NYT, NPR) stories about medication and antibody therapy for COVID-19, as well as vaccination against COVID-19. He was invited to speak about drug prices at the 2020 STAT Summit.
Peter Groeneveld, MD, MS
- In work derived from data originally sponsored by IIR 14-077, Dr. Groeneveld compared the use of percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) in VA and Medicare patients with acute coronary syndromes, demonstrating that it is increasingly common in both systems for PCIs to be coded for acute myocardial infarction. This may reflect increasing incentives on operators to code the reason for PCI as being high-acuity coronary disease, rather than chronic stable angina.
Katie Suda, PharmD, MS
- Dr. Suda provided data from her VA health services research program to address questions raised during the Senate hearing for the DVA Nominee for Assistant Secretary for Enterprise Integration. Dr. Suda received the 2020 Antibiotic Stewardship Scholarship Award from the Society of Healthcare Epidemiology on America.
- Dr. Suda co-leads an international collaboration to determine the effect of COVID on drug supply chain and shortages.
In addtion
- Dr. Barrett, a QUERI ADIL recipient, is partnering with VAMedSafe to evaluate which types of medications dispensed through VA Community Care Urgent Care (CCUC) pose safety risks for Veterans, evaluate whether there is variation in the safety of medications dispensed through CCUC by race, ethnicity, and gender, and support VAMedSAFE in the implementation of a new Urgent Care Prescription Dashboard to monitor the safety of medications prescribed to Veterans through VA CCUC.
- Dr. Oslin's proposal for CMCVAMC to be a participant in the VA's Network of Dedicated Enrollment Sites (NODES) was approved and will begin in April 2022, enhancing the medical center's ability to participate in VA CSP studies to evaluate clinical therapeutics.
- Dr. Rogal was asked by the Director of the VA Liver Disease Program to provide subject matter expertise for a Congressional briefing about VA transplantation.
- CHERP Investigators authored 91 peer-review publications focused on clinical therapeutics, many editorials and commentaries in the scientific literature; social media posts; and national newspaper, television, and radio feature stories.
