Executive Assistant:
Rachel Levitt rlevitt@hsph.harvard.edu
ARNOLD EPSTEIN, M.D., M.A., is the John H. Foster Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. His research interests focus on quality of care and access to care. During 1993-94 he served in the Clinton Administration working in the White House on health reform, and in 2014-2016 he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary and head of the Office of Health Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Epstein was vice chair of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Developing a National Report on Health Care Quality. He also served as chairman of the board of AcademyHealth. He was co-chair of the Performance Measurement Coordinating Council of the Joint Commission, the National Committee on Quality Assurance, and the American Medical Association. He served on the board of governors of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute and on the board of the Center for Health Care Strategies. Dr. Epstein is a recipient of the Distinguished Investigator award from AcademyHealth. He is associate editor for health policy at the New England Journal of Medicine, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
Other Affiliations
Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management; Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy, HMS; Chief, Section on Health Services and Policy Research, Division of General Medicine (Brigham & Women’s Hospital); Associate Editor, New England Journal of Medicine
Research
Dr. Epstein’s research interests focus on access and quality of care especially for disadvantaged populations. Among ongoing projects are studies that examine:
- The impact of Pay-for-Performance on quality of care for low-income patients;
- The impact of public quality performance reporting on quality improvement;
- The relationship between publicly reported measures of discharge planning and rates of readmission;
- Hospital governance and quality of care; and
- The relationship between expenditures and quality of care for persons with mental health conditions.
Education
M.D., 1976, Duke University
