Jeffrey H. Silber

Past Courses

• HCMG212 - HC QUALITY & OUTCOMES

  This course will familiarize students with methods used to assess the quality of hospital or provider health care using outcomes data, and to understand and evaluate studies involving health care outcomes. Students are exposed to the mechanics of hospital quality evaluation and challenged to evaluate the medical and health services research literature on health care evaluation, as well as to make inferences regarding hospital quality and the comparison or rankings of hospitals or providers. Topics will include the history of health care outcomes analysis; the conceptual framework for outcome studies; consumer demand for information; an overview of medical data and data collection systems; a description of outcome statistics and severity adjstments currently in use; the study of excess variation in outcomes; and the use of guidelines to assess outcomes. By the end of the course, students will have developed a thorough appreciation of the current methods used by policy makers, researchers, and health care providers to evaluate medical outcomes, as well as those used by consumers to choose hospitals and providers.

• HCMG900 - PROSEMINAR IN HSR

  900-001 Proseminar in Health Econometrics: This course will cover empirical methods used in economics research with an emphasis on applications in health care and public economics. The methods covered include linear regression, matching, panel data models, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, bunching,qualitative and limited dependent variable models, count data, quantile regressions, and duration models. The discussion will be a mix of theory and application, with emphasis on the latter. The readings consist of a blend of classic and recent methodological and empirical papers in economics . Course requirements include several problem sets, paper presentations, an econometric analysis project and a final exam. The course is open to doctoral students from departments other than Health Care Management with permission from the instructor. 900-002 Proseminar in Health Economics: Models and Methods: This course is intended to provide entering doctoral students with information on the variety of health economics models, methods, topics, and publication outlets valued and used by faculty in the HCMG doctoral program and outside of it. The course has two main parts: the first, to acquaint students with theoretical modeling tools used frequently by health economists. This part of the course involves a number of lectures coupled with students presentations of class projects in a workshop environment. The second part of the course will offer presentations from the health economics, management and operations research community at Penn on a research method or strategy they have found helpful and they think is important for all doctoral students to know.

• Nancy Abramson Wolfson Endowed Chair of Health Services Research, 2013
• AcademyHealth Article-of-the-Year, 2011
• AcademyHealth Abstract-of-the-Year, 2007
• The Hummeler Research Prize (Article-of-the-Year), Joseph Stokes, Jr. Research Institute, 2003
• AcademyHealth (formerly Association for Health Services Research) Article-of-the-Year, 2003
• Samuel P. Martin Health Services Research Award, 2000
• Ethel Brown Foerderer Fund for Excellence Award, 1997

• Check Up: Breast cancer: Why blacks fare worse, Philadelphia Inquirer - 08/25/2013
• Study finds why black women less likely to survive breast cancer, CBS News - 07/24/2013
• Health at diagnosis may drive breast cancer survival gap, Reuters - 07/23/2013
• Black-White Divide Persists in Breast Cancer, New York Times - 07/23/2013
• Failure and Rescue, The New Yorker - 10/07/2012
• How aggressive is your hospital?, New York Times - 02/03/2011
• What and where is the “waste” in health care?, The Incidental Economist - 01/12/2011
• Children’s hospitals may face financial hardship, Pittsburgh Business Times - 03/08/1999

Knowledge @ Wharton

• Grading Hospital Quality with a Level Playing Field, Knowledge @ Wharton - 05/20/2014