Health policy and musculoskeletal conditions.

This paper reviews two strains of research within rheumatology relevant to contemporary health policy debates. The first concerns studies of the effectiveness of medical care on outcomes among persons with musculoskeletal conditions; the second, studies of functional status and disability among such persons. The studies of the effectiveness of medical care, largely funded by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, are designed to assist in the development of practice guidelines concerning lower back pain, knee replacement, hip disease, and other conditions for use by physicians and other providers as well as third party payers. The studies of functional status and disability in arthritis, largely funded by the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, and Skin Diseases as part of its Multipurpose Arthritis Center Program, are designed to provide measures of outcome for use in studies of medical effectiveness and to assess the societal impacts of musculoskeletal conditions.