Study Team

Investigators

Stephen M. Shortell, PhD, MPH, MBA (Principal Investigator) is Dean of the School of Public Health, Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management and Professor of Organization Behavior at the School of Public Health and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Shortell has also served as Principal Investigator on NSPO1 and NSPO2. His particular expertise is in conceptualizing, measuring, and analyzing organizational factors that are associated with physician organization performance. His papers have appeared in a wide variety of organizational research and health services/health policy research journals and he is the author or co-author of ten books. Dr. Shortell is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and past editor of Health Services Research. He has been the recipient of the distinguished Baxter Allegiance Prize for his contributions to health services research, the Distinguished Investigator Award from Academy Health, and many other awards.

Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD is the Livingston Farrand Associate Professor of Health Policy at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Casalino brings a unique background to this project; he worked for 20 years as a family physician in a 5-9 physician private practice. He has a PhD in health services research with a focus on the sociology of organizations. Dr. Casalino was one of the core team members for NSPO1 and NSPO2 and was PI for the NSSMPP. His work as senior academic on the team studying physicians and hospitals during rounds four, five and six of the Community Tracking Study provides him with extensive on-the-ground and up-to-date knowledge of U.S. health care. He has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including numerous articles in JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Health Affairs. Dr. Casalino received an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the RWJF and is a member of the National Advisory Committee for this program.

Diane Rittenhouse, MD, MPH is Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Rittenhouse is a practicing family physician and has received a Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her principal research interest lies at the intersection of social policy and clinical quality, particularly with regard to the organization, delivery and financing of primary care. She was a core member of the NSPO2 and NSSMPP and she was PI on an NSPO-like study funded by CHCF to examine CMPs and IT in all physician organizations with more than six physicians contracting with Medicaid managed care in California. She is currently Principal Investigator for the evaluation of federal efforts to restore, expand and improve primary care services in Greater New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and for a qualitative study of the implementation of new models of primary care in the safety-net. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, on topics including innovations in primary care delivery and policies impacting the primary care workforce and delivery system. Dr. Rittenhouse has been invited to speak to members of the U.S. Congress on the role of primary care in health reform.

Andy Ryan, PhD, MA is an Associate Professor of Public Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Ryan has a PhD in Social Policy with a concentration in Health Policy from the Heller School of Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. Dr. Ryan’s research focuses on pay-for-performance and public quality reporting in healthcare, disparities and discrimination in healthcare, policy analysis, and applied econometrics. His received the 2009 AcademyHealth Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “The Design of Value Based Purchasing in Medicare: Theory and Empirical Evidence” and the John M. Eisenberg Article-of-the-Year in Health Services Research for “Has Pay-for-Performance Decreased Access for Minority Patients?”