Comparative effectiveness research (CER) tackles the decisions as to whether a treatment or intervention should be used, by comparing its effectiveness and cost to some standard. CER is an initiative brought forth by the Obama administration as a way of better informing health choices and improving health care system efficiencies by increasing transparency. CER methods have been around for years in Australia and the UK. Their arrival in the US is timely with respect to the current convergence of a health care, health insurance, and economical crisis. There are four general steps in CER under Bayesian and decision analysis: 1) convert effect sizes to probabilities, 2) simulate or model a direct comparison between two treatments, 3) determining how stable are the findings, and 4) interpret, decide, and monitor.#QuantitativeMethods-TheoryandDesign #2009Conference #Decision #Research,Technology,andDevelopmentEval #CostsEffectivenessBenefitsandEconomics #HealthEvaluation #SystemsinEvaluation