Facts About the COR

• Clinical and Outcomes Research (COR) staff study a wide range of diseases and healthcare issues. Recent research has focused on diabetes, epilepsy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, breast cancer, and anticoagulation therapy. Areas of expertise include disease epidemiology, treatment effectiveness, physician practice patterns, health care costs, medication compliance, and quality of life issues. Research is frequently conducted using patient-level data from managed care organizations as well as national health databases. COR maintains a high-quality patient database of enrollment, claims, and clinical data from the Lovelace Health Plan and a health plan in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
• COR also conducts environmental health research and currently is leading a national study to determine if arsenic in drinking water is associated with lung and bladder cancer. COR researchers have studied environmental health issues in Australia, Italy, and numerous U.S. communities.
• COR conducts research using large, historical databases and other retrospective and prospective sources of data. These sources include health care claims data, clinical data, national and state birth and death records, healthcare hotline data, quality of life and other psychosocial data, and patient medical records.
• COR also maintains one of the highest quality patient-level healthcare databases in the country, the Managed Care Database. This database contains over 1.5 million patient-years of health care utilization, cost, and clinical data from managed care populations and has been used in several studies of national import.
• COR has research affiliations with over two dozen managed care organizations, healthcare provider groups, and health outcomes research organizations, as well as the University of New Mexico and West Virginia University. In partnership with the Lovelace Clinic Foundation, COR also conducts research through the HMO Research Network, a group of 12 HMOs that performs research of national public policy interest. COR project sponsors include federal agencies (National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), major pharmaceutical firms, and contract research organizations.

Recently Completed and Ongoing Projects:

• An analysis of the health care resource impact of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a major smoking-associated morbidity, and development of predictive models of disease severity.
• Testing of a comprehensive diabetes surveillance system in managed care organizations.
• An examination of how physician use of laboratory testing impacts on public health surveillance of infectious diseases.
• As part of a multi-site research alliance, a series of studies examining glycemic control, drug regimen adherence, and comorbidities associated with diabetes.
• Studies on the prevalence of Clostridium difficile infection, a gastrointestinal infection that is rapidly growing in the United States and of major concern in clinical practice.
• A national multi-site study to examine prevalence of chronic liver disease and its relation to drug regimen in persons with diabetes.
• A series of studies on breast cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment, and costs, including ethnic differences, within a managed care population.
• A study of the cost of uncontrolled hypertension and of provider and patient characteristics associated with good blood pressure control.
• An evaluation of incidence and treatment costs of gastropathy in patients taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents.
• Determination of the cost-benefit of outpatient low molecular weight heparin therapy compared to traditional inpatient unfractionated heparin therapy in patients with deep vein thrombosis.