Outcomes and Effectiveness Research
Laitman Scholarships
The Nanette Laitman Clinical Scholars Program in Public Health is funded by a $3 million gift from the Laitman family and a $1 million matching gift from Weill Cornell Medical College’s “Advancing the Clinical Mission” capital campaign. Two of the four scholars are based in the Division of Ourcomes and Effectiveness Research:
Tara Bishop, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Division of Outcomes and Effectiveness Research, Assistant Professor of Medicine, and Assistant Attending Physician, is the Nanette Laitman Clinical Scholar in Public Health/Clinical Evaluation. Dr. Bishop studies factors that influence physician decisions, the effects of these decisions on health care utilization and quality, and the effects that policies have on changing physicians’ behaviors. She also investigates how structural reform can improve the practice of primary care and realign payment incentives with primary care workloads. Her recent publications include an article in JAMA which found that the number of paid malpractice claims for events in the outpatient setting was similar to the number in the inpatient settings. This study, which received enormous attention worldwide, points to a great need to improve patient safety though means such as better coordination of care within and between doctors’ offices and proper use of electronic health records. Dr. Bishop was also the lead author of an article in Archives of Internal Medicine on the trend of physicians to accept fewer and fewer patients with health insurance. The article discusses how this trend may end up hampering access to health care, despite the fact that many more people will gain health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Dr. Bishop was also the lead author of a recent article in the American Journal of Managed Care examining the association between physician quality improvement incentives and ambulatory quality measures. In addition, she wrote an Op-Ed piece for USA Today, titled “Medicare needs sustainable ‘doc fix’,” which received the most prominent placement in the opinion section of the newspaper. Dr. Bishop earned her BS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her MD from Weill Cornell Medical College. Before joining the Department, she was based at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, where she was an intern and resident in the Department of Medicine (and received the Richard Gorlin Award for Resident Humanitarianism), and a fellow in the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Care and in the Division of General Internal Medicine.She completed a Masters in Public Health from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in September 2010.
Matthew J. Press, MD, MSc, Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Division of Outcomes and Effectiveness Research, Assistant Professor of Medicine, and Assistant Attending Physician, is the Nanette Laitman Clinical Scholar in Public Health/Quality of Care Research. The scholarship is helping support his studies on hospital readmissions, which are often an indicator of deficiencies in the healthcare system. His projects examine what puts patients most at risk for readmission, how best to measure readmission rates, and how we can most effectively reduce their occurrence (when appropriate). He also studies other aspects of health care quality that relate to coordination of care, both on the system and individual level. Dr. Press received an AB degree in Public Policy, and then an MD, both from Brown University. He completed an Internship and Residency in Categorical Internal Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Weill Cornell Medical College, he was a Clinical Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania, a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and an Ambulatory Care Special Fellow at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. He also completed an MSc in Health Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Press is a Diplomate in Internal Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine. He currently hosts the “Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Health Policy Podcast,” a monthly interview series with health policy experts (available at http://rwjcsp.unc.edu/resources/podcast/index.html). In addition, he was chosen to serve on the Ad Hoc Communications Committee for the Society of General Internal Medicine. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics of the University of Pennsylvania.
