CHQOER: the Center for Health Quality, Outcomes and Economic Research

Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Medical Center

Bedford, Massachusetts

CHQOER is a community of researchers whose goal is to improve the quality and delivery of health care for our nation’s Veterans. 

Each CHQOER researcher is a scientist who brings methodological and subject matter expertise.  Each is an educator who guides the next generation of clinicians, researchers, and policy-makers.  About one third of our researchers are also practicing clinicians. 

CHQOER’s Core Investigators, Adjunct Investigators and Postdoctoral Research Fellows are listed below. 

Core Investigators

Dan Berlowitz, MD, Director -- assessing and improving the quality of health care in both ambulatory and long-term care settings

Barbara Bokhour, PhD -- provider-patient communication, disparities, chronic illness  (asthma, hypertension, cancer), QUERI HIV/Hepatitis, qualitative and mixed methods

Ann Borzecki, MD, MPH -- patient safety, management of hypertension and other chronic disease, quality of care, large database studies

Kathleen Carey, PhD -- economics of health care, cost-efficient ways to improve quality of care

Jack Clark, PhD -- medical sociology, how people live with chronic disease and make difficult treatment decisions, patient-provider communication, quantitative and qualitative methods

Mari-Lynn Drainoni, PhD MEd -- mental health, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, developmental disabilities, quality improvement, developing and implementing systems of care

Susan Eisen, PhD -- quality and outcomes of mental health and substance abuse services, patient-centered care, racial/ethnic disparities, resilience and outcomes in OEF/OIF veterans

Marsha Ellison, PhD -- ending veteran homelessness, supported education for veterans with PTSD, peer-delivered interventions, housing and employment of the severely mentally ill

Rani Elwy, PhD -- health psychology, impact of provider-patient communication on perceptions of care, depression, risk and resilience factors in OEF/OIF veterans

DiJon Fasoli, PhD, MSN, MBA, RN -- patient safety, nurse staffing and patient outcomes, evidence-based nursing practice

Graeme Fincke, MD -- medication use and adherence, diabetes care, polypharmacy, pharmico-epidemiology, use of prescription databases for research

Gemmae Fix, PhD -- how patients manage multiple chronic conditions, implementation science, patient-facing technologies, provider behavior, medical anthropology, ethnographic and qualitative methodology 

Allen L. Gifford, MD, Associate Director -- HIV, Hepatitis C, medication adherence, implementation research, HIV/HEP QUERI

Mark Glickman, PhD -- Bayesian optimal design, statistical applications to health services, latent variables models

Christine Hartmann, PhD, MSS -- long term care, organizational culture, quality and safety, quantitative and qualitative methods

Tom Houston, MD -- health informatics, smoking-cessation, patient-provider communication, physician behavior, eHealth QUERI

Judy Jones, DDS, MPH, DScD -- relationship between oral conditions, general health and quality of life, impact of oral conditions on nutrition, prevental of root caries

Lewis Kazis, ScD -- monitoring patient outcomes, quality improvement, health survey development, Medicare and Medicaid

Nancy Kressin, PhD -- racial, ethnic, socioeconomic disparites in health and health care delivery, hypertension, chronic disease, health information technology

Keith McInnes, ScD, MSc -- health informatics, quality of care, patient self-management of chronic disease with an emphasis on HIV and Hepatitis C, HIV/HEP QUERI

Donald Miller, ScD  -- epidemiology, nutrition, diabetes and related co-morbidities, medication safety and effectiveness, survey and database studies

Karen Quigley, PhD -- stress and cardiovascular and autonomic function, individual differences in stress reactivity, stress and anxiety in symptom reporting and health decision making, post-deployment health

Sowmya Rao, PhD -- survey research, cancer epidemiology, health services research, disparities, missing data

Adam Rose, MD MSc -- stroke prevention, management of hypertension, long-term anti-coagulation, quality measurements, health services research, outcomes research

Jim Rothendler, MD -- medical informatics, cardiovascular disease, patient safety, prescription databases, issues in using administrative data in research

Alfredo Selim, MD MPH -- health status of veterans and medicare enrollees, quality indicators, risk adjustment

Stephanie Shimada, PhD -- patient-directed eHealth technology, My Health eVet, quality measurement, patient safety, disparities, eHealth QUERI

David Smelson, PsyD -- ending veteran homelessness, mental health, substance abuse, smoking cessation

Eric Smith, MD MPH  -- suicidality, antipsychotics, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, psychopharmacology, clinical trials

Renda Wiener, MD MPH -- pulmonary and critical care outcomes, shared decision-making, implementation, large database analysis, surveys, meta-analysis

Adjunct Investigators

Kee Chan, PhD -- infectious disease management (HIV/AIDs and Hepatitis C), cost-effectiveness analysis, newborn screening and child health, implementation sciences

Cindy Christiansen, PhD -- biostatistics, multilevel and prediction models for health policy applications

Laurel Leslie, MD MPH -- developmental and mental health needs of children and adolescents,  impact of guidelines/policy on youth service use and outcomes, collaborative models of care across sectors, incorporating the child and family as active participants in care

Xinhua Ren, PhD --statistics, treatment effectiveness, phrarmacoepidemiology, patient-centered care, cross-cultural issues in health services research, chronic disease outcomes including schizophrenia, hypertension, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease.

James Schlosser, MD MBA -- clinical systems improvement, improving the process by which injured veterans are assigned to medical and disability benefits

Jeff Solomon, PhD -- enhancing healthcare provider autonomy and effectiveness, improving provider-patient communication, qualitative methods, ethnographic observation, HIV testing, patient safety, health-related internet use

Avron Spiro, PhD -- epidemiology, cognition, aging, traumatic brain injury

Ted Stefos, PhD -- health economics, costs of hospital adverse events, healthcare cost function estimations, physician productivity, hospital staffing, regulation and fairness in prospective payment

Steven Vlad, MD -- pharmacoepidemiology of drugs used for rheumatic disease, adverse events due to glucocorticoids, risks of biphosphonate use, pharmacologic risk factors for osteonecrosis

Postdoctoral Research Fellows