August 24, 2001

An MGH report in the Aug.15 Journal of the American Medical Association says that close to half of the research leaders at U.S. medical schools do not consider their clinical research enterprises to be healthy or robust. They also question the overall quality of the clinical research being conducted at their institutions. The news, however, is not all bad. Approximately two-thirds of the leaders at those medical schools with the most intensive research programs rated the health and quality of their clinical research enterprises as good or excellent.

Nine of 10 medical school research leaders report that pressures to see patients and insufficient clinical revenue are problems for clinical research. Four of five research leaders consider the challenges facing clinical research at medical schools to be urgent or extremely urgent. Despite this sense of urgency, less than half of these leaders said that their departments or institutions had implemented strategic policies to address the problems.

"Here we have a survey where medical school leaders across the country have taken a hard look at their clinical research enterprises, and many are concerned about what they saw," says Eric G. Campbell, PhD, of the MGH Institute for Health Policy, who is the study's first author. "If those who are closest to this kind of research think that there are problems, it sends a clear signal that steps need to be taken to improve clinical research – or at least raise it to the quality level of basic research."

Campbell's co-authors are Joel S. Weissman, PhD, and David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, of the Institute for Health Policy; and Ernest Moy, MD, MPH, of the Association of American Medical Colleges.