Understanding Pragmatic Trials

Generalizability of randomized trials is always limited because of the super-selectivity of the patients enrolled in these trials and the very controlled conditions in which clinical care is delivered. Pragmatic trials are performed in order to provide guidance for how to best deliver clinical care in situations that more closely resemble actual clinical scenarios. Hal Sox, MD, director of peer review for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), explains how these trials work and what clinical questions they answer.