Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute: the intersection of science and health care.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a nonprofit corporation that is neither an agency nor an establishment of the U.S. government. PCORI's mission is to support the production of well-validated scientific evidence to assist the nation in making informed decisions about a broad range of health care-related issues. In this Commentary, the directors of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health discuss PCORI's opportunities to contribute to a robust portfolio of scientific inquiry that builds on their agencies' investment in comparative effectiveness research.