Monitoring and Evaluating Progress

PCORI as a Learning Organization

As a learning organization, PCORI monitors progress and measures success in advancing its goals — National Priorities for Health — across all aspects of its activities to fund and support patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER). Our evaluation activities are comprehensive, ongoing and continuously embedded into our work at PCORI. These evaluation activities are guided by a Framework for Monitoring Progress and Measuring Success and learning questions.

Framework for Monitoring Progress and Measuring Success on PCORI's Goals

The Framework for Monitoring Progress and Measuring Success is a high-level depiction of the logical path between the organization’s activities, shaped by PCORI’s holistic approach, and PCORI’s progress and success in advancing its goals.

• Our Drivers & Goals. PCORI is driven by its five National Priorities for Health, a comprehensive set of overarching and mutually reinforcing goals that focus on long-term impact and drive research funding and other initiatives to generate and disseminate evidence. These goals drive PCORI toward Our Aspirations for more efficient, effective and equitable health care and improved health for all. All of PCORI’s CER funding activities, together with other initiatives, contribute to advancing all of the National Priorities for Health collectively. For this reason, the priorities are embedded throughout PCORI’s framework and learning questions.
• How & What We Create. PCORI’s work is shaped by its Holistic Approach – interrelated, essential elements to generate and promote the use of evidence through funding patient-centered CER, engagement, dissemination and implementation and infrastructure.
• What We Accomplish. The intended results of PCORI’s funding activities and related initiatives are the generation of CER evidence that matters to patients, caregivers and the broader health and healthcare community; for example, evidence that is relevant, trustworthy, accessible and useful for health decisions. These funding activities are also intended to result in enhanced culture and capacity for patient-centered CER, which is reflected in a broad, skilled CER community which produces and uses methods, tools and resources that support strengthened conduct of CER and dissemination and implementation of CER findings.
• What We Contribute to Advancing. PCORI’s funding activities and related initiatives lay the groundwork for evidence being used by patients and others in the broader health and healthcare community to inform health decisions and improve health care and health outcomes for all. PCORI’s funding activities also promote an integrated health research ecosystem able to support patient-centered CER and evidence-informed health-decisions.
• Monitor Progress and Measure Success. Given the interdependent, mutually reinforcing nature of the National Priorities for Health, PCORI’s approach to monitor progress and measure success as a research funder includes a comprehensive set of cross-cutting indicators to measure across the National Priorities for Health collectively. In particular, PCORI evaluates progress of PCORI-funded CER results on the path to impact through signals that these results are accessed, used and contribute to changes in health care and health.

Monitoring Progress and Measuring Success to Advance PCORI’s Mission

PCORI’s organizational learning and evaluation is grounded in our mission and articulated in PCORI’s Strategic Plan. PCORI aims to:

• Generate trustworthy information about PCORI’s progress.
• Use learnings from monitoring and evaluation activities for data-informed planning and decision making.
• Transparently report on PCORI’s progress to groups across the entire CER community.

Incorporating a Range of Information Needs

To align PCORI’s activities to relevant and timely learning and evaluation questions about its progress and success, PCORI engages and incorporates input from a wide range of communities — patients, caregivers and the broader health and healthcare community — in the planning and conduct of our organizational learning and evaluation activities.

These groups provide input on the key aspects and approaches to monitoring progress and measuring success toward advancing PCORI’s strategic goals.

Posted: July 2024; Updated: March 2025