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t the turn of the century, total prescription drug sales in the United States approached $125 billion, and health-care systems across the country faced mounting pressure to reduce costs. Patients, pharmaceutical companies, insurance corporations, managed care organizations, and government agencies all clamored for solutions.
seeds that would allow the university’s efforts in pharmacoeconomics to blossom in future years.
Enter pharmacoeconomics, which considers the costs (investments) and benefits (outcomes) of pharmaceuticals and pharmacy services by comparing alternatives. Though cost is sometimes viewed as a “dirty word” in health care, the importance of weighing costs against economic, clinical, and humanistic outcomes has become not only relevant, but a vital field of study.
“The U.S. really didn’t turn a strong eye to pharmacoeconomics until the early 1990s, and then
Eager to address one of the twenty-first century’s most pressing and controversial issues, UIC established the Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research (CPR) in 2002, hoping that it would become an influential force in this industryshaping discipline. And in its decade of operation, the CPR, the Midwest’s lone entity devoted to this type of research, has accomplished just that with a pioneering spirit and resolute mission. Guided by the mantra “Establishing Evidence and Value,” the CPR’s faculty researchers, a collection of internationally renowned experts with interdisciplinary skills and knowledge, have produced groundbreaking, patient-centered outcomes research that informs health-care decision making, while the center’s focus on disseminating knowledge has further moved the health-care needle.
The Makings of the Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research
In the 1980s and into the 1990s, a trio of UIC pharmacy faculty—Hind Hatoum, Richard Hutchinson, and Ken Witte—began the university’s early work in outcomes research. Primarily concerned with the evaluation of clinical pharmacy services, the group’s work planted valuable
In 1993, UIC more aggressively aligned itself with the still-novel discipline when then-assistant professor Sheldon Kong established the school’s first graduate course in pharmacoeconomics.
“There isn’t another college of pharmacy in the nation that has the DEcIDE Center grant or CERT, let alone both.” – Dean Jerry Bauman it emerged fast,” says Kong, a UIC faculty member from 1992 to 1995 who currently leads outcomes research at Merck. “UIC needed to respond to this changing environment, and this course was a step in that direction.” Three years after Kong’s course introduction, thenUIC pharmacy professor Jerry Bauman, bs ’76, res ‘77, proposed a program in pharmaceutical outcomes research. Though the proposal wasn’t approved, Bauman retained his vision, convinced that this was a crucial direction for the College to explore.
When Bauman became head of the department of pharmacy practice in 1998, he revisited his original proposal and resurrected his ambition to cement pharmacoeceonomics in the curriculum. Seeking cohesiveness and organization, Bauman believed a formal center would position UIC to capitalize on the rising opportunities in outcomes research. “If we were to take advantage of this opportunity, fill the void, and even gain a degree of national prominence,” Bauman recalls, “then I knew we needed to step up and make pharmacoeconomics a major theme of our department.” Bauman first needed the people to drive the initiative. He recruited Glen Schumock, one-time assistant director of pharmacy at the UIC Hospital and Clinics and, at the time, a hospital pharmacy director in Wisconsin, to return to UIC and realize the idea, alongside Surrey Walton, a full-fledged outcomes researcher on staff since 1997. Together, the tandem began the internal process of forming the CPR. “We all felt like outcomes research was an area that would only grow and that forming a center would be a way to spark collaboration and secure funding,” Walton says. On Nov. 5, 2001, Schumock, who would later become the CPR’s first director, and Walton went before university officials and proposed the CPR, a center to be jointly administered by the Departments of Pharmacy Practice and Pharmacy Administration. On Nov. 28, 2001, the Illinois Board of Higher Education granted the center temporary status, which led to recognition of its permanent status on Jan. 29, 2008.
Key Milestones
Almost immediately, the CPR established itself as one of the nation’s most ambitious and productive centers of its kind. CPR faculty authored dozens of publications, served as principal investigators on practice-changing studies, presented research papers Catalyst – Summer 2012 – pharmalumni.uic.edu |
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