Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab
The Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab (HQO) is a state-of-the-art health services research group that produces actionable evidence to improve the quality, equity, and resilience of healthcare delivery systems.
677 Huntington Ave.
Kresge Building, 4th Floor
Boston, MA
Our Team
Faculty Directors
Jose F. Figueroa, MD, MPH co-directs the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is an associate professor of health policy and management at Harvard Chan School and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also a practicing internist and associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he serves as faculty director of the BWH Medicine Residency Management & Leadership Pathway.
Dr. Figueroa’s main research interests focus on understanding the drivers of healthcare spending and poor clinical outcomes among older, vulnerable populations with complex needs. To date, this has included work on racial and ethnic minorities, dual-eligible Medicare-Medicaid beneficiaries, and people with disabilities, frailty, HIV, and serious mental illness. His research also focuses on evaluating policy interventions and payment reform aimed at improving quality of care and controlling costs, with a particular focus on how these reforms affect safety-net providers and hospitals.
Thomas C. Tsai, MD, MPH co-directs the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard Chan School and assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is also a practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Tsai’s research focuses on understanding the impact of health policy efforts on achieving value in our healthcare system by reducing spending and improving outcomes. He leads a breadth of projects bridging clinical medicine, health policy, and public health through three key portfolios: healthcare quality and equity; health policy evaluation; and health system resilience.
From 2014 to 2015, he served as a senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Office of Health Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. From 2022 to 2023, he served as senior policy advisor for the COVID-19 Response in the Biden Administration and the testing and treatment coordinator on the White House COVID-19 Response team, where he led the efforts to bring the country out of the public health emergency by increasing equitable and widescale access to diagnostics and treatments.
Faculty and Research Scientists
Laura G. Burke is assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and instructor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a practicing emergency medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC).
Her research focuses on examining variation in the quality and cost of emergency and acute care, with a special focus on older adults enrolled in the Medicare program. Dr. Burke leads work examining the epidemiology of diagnostic error in emergency care and the association of misdiagnosis with patient outcomes and healthcare costs. She also conducts research on patterns of observation care use among Medicare beneficiaries visiting the emergency room, including beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Dr. Burke received her MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. After completing her emergency medicine residency at BIDMC, she went on to earn her MPH from Harvard Chan School.
Austin Frakt, PhD, is a health economist and associate director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the VA Boston Healthcare System. He is also principal research scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. Frakt is editor-in-chief of Health Services Research and of the evidence-based health policy blog The Incidental Economist. He also serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Managed Care and is a member of the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council.
Dr. Frakt received his PhD from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in statistical and applied mathematics and his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in Applied and Engineering Physics.
Miranda Lam, MD, MBA is an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and an instructor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a practicing radiation oncologist at BWH and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr. Lam’s research focuses on evaluating variation in the cost and quality of care delivered to cancer patients in the United States. In recent work, she has focused on topics including value-based payment models, healthcare consolidation, price transparency regulation, and disparities in cancer treatment.
She received her MD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Yanlei Ma, PhD is a research associate with the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Ma received her PhD in Economics from Cornell University and was a research fellow at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute prior to joining this group. Her work has been published in Health Affairs, Medical Care, JAMA Network Open, Obstetrics & Gynecology, among other journals.
E. John Orav, PhD is an associate professor of medicine and of biostatistics at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Orav has extensive experience in clinical trials, health services research, and program evaluation. His current projects focus on the special care needs of older patients with dementia, those living in nursing homes, and those receiving care in the emergency room and the in-patient setting. He is an advisor to the Mongan Institute Center for Aging and Serious Illness at the Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as the U.S. Health and Human Services office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. He has been actively engaged for over 35 years in teaching and mentoring physicians entering academic careers at Harvard and in related programs in Buenos Aires, Moscow, and Beirut.
Dr. Renee N. Salas is the founding director of The Cooperative at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is the co-director of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Group’s Climate Crisis and Clinical Practice Initiative and founded the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change U.S. Brief Working Group. She engages in research to explore how climate change is impacting the healthcare system.
Dr. Salas was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2021 for her work in climate change and health and serves as the Climate Change Interest Group Chair. She is on the Steering Committee for the NAM Grand Challenge on Climate Change, Health, and Equity, and serves on the Advisory Committee for The National Academies Climate Crossroads initiative.
Dr. Salas is an emergency medicine physician in the Center for Social Justice and Health Equity in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and holds a variety of affiliations across Harvard University. She received her MD from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine with an MS in Clinical Research from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She earned her MPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health with a concentration in environmental health.
Staff
Dannie is a research assistant and statistical programmer who studied global studies and pre-medical studies at the University of Chicago. They work on projects related to health disparities, transgender and gender diverse people’s health, the quality of care received by people with HIV, and Medicare policy.
Ciara Duggan is a research assistant in the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab, where she conducts research assessing the impact of policy interventions on value and equity across the U.S. healthcare system. Since joining the lab in 2021, she has contributed to a range of research projects examining variation in healthcare quality, utilization, spending, and clinical outcomes among Medicare beneficiaries, including low-income beneficiaries who are dually eligible for Medicaid and other vulnerable and underserved subpopulations. She earned a BA in Social Studies with a secondary field in Global Health and Health Policy from Harvard College.
Pasha Hamed is a statistical analyst and programmer in the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab. He held a similar position in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, where he contributed to research on Accountable Care Organizations, hospital readmissions and post-acute care, among other Medicare-focused topics. He holds degrees in computer science and applied statistics from Duke and Columbia.
Deb Hollett is a staff assistant responsible for administrative tasks and supporting senior faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Before joining the team, she worked as an IT professional and a religious education leader. She graduated from UMass Boston with a dual degree in Psychology and Theatre Arts.
Ryan C. Burke is the lead biostatistician in the Emergency Medicine Research Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Ryan collaborates with HqO faculty on emergency medicine health services research projects, focusing on care trends and health outcomes among Medicare beneficiaries. At BIDMC she advises researchers on study design and implementation, oversees study data acquisition, and leads data analyses. Her research interests include methodological issues with using administrative data for research, improving care and outcomes for emergency department patients, and the intersection between emergency care and women’s health. Ryan received a PhD in Epidemiology from Kent State University and an MPH in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Saint Louis University.
Ellen Latsko is a research assistant in the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab. She joined the lab in 2022 after completing her MPH in Health Policy & Law at Boston University. She previously interned with the Evidence-Based Policy Institute at Judge Baker Children’s Center, contributing to the launch of their initiative to promote positive health outcomes for LGBTQ+ youth in Massachusetts.
Jessica Phelan, MS is the assistant director of analytics for the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab, where she works with faculty on statistical analysis for various research projects and is responsible for the management of shared data resources. She enjoys working through complicated data questions as well as training other analysts on the wide array of data we have access to on our team. She received an MS in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Georgetown University.
Bekka Stein is a research assistant and statistical programmer in the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab who studied Mathematics and Public Policy at Carleton College. Since joining the lab in 2023, she has worked on projects regarding plan choice and care quality for dual-eligible Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries as well as service utilization and outcomes in the Veterans Health Administration. Bekka is passionate about investigating health disparities and studying mitigating policies. Before joining the lab, she worked as a research assistant for the Harvard Opinion Research Program.
Eric Yu is a research assistant in the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab. Eric received his Masters in Public Health specializing in Global Health and Epidemiology from Brown School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis. Eric’s work focuses on both the role of private equity investment in healthcare and the ownership structure of hospitals and health insurance providers in the U.S. healthcare system. The primary goal of his research is to advance health equity and improve healthcare delivery.
Tianfeng Zhang is a research assistant in the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab. She earned her Master’s in Public Health with a focus on Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Boston University School of Public Health. She has worked on projects focused on evaluating health outcomes and addressing disparities among cancer patients enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid. Tianfeng is passionate about new insights and solutions to improve health outcomes and reduce disparities.
Jie Zheng, PhD is the associate director of analytics for the Healthcare Quality and Outcomes Lab. For the past twenty-seven years, she has served as the lead statistical analyst on projects utilizing Medicare claims, Medicare encounter data, Minimum Data Set, American Hospital Association survey data, and other publicly available datasets to evaluate health care quality, cost, measurement, and policy. Her co-authored work has been published in journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs, Annals of Surgery, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Circulation, Health Services Research, The BMJ, and Healthcare, among others.
Affiliated Faculty
Nicholas L. Berlin, MD, MPH, MS, is a surgeon in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a health services researcher focusing on delivery systems innovations, Medicare payment reform, and the affordability of healthcare. Prior to coming to Boston, he completed the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy. He holds an MPH in statistics and epidemiology from Yale University and an MS in health and healthcare research from the University of Michigan.
Melissa Garrido is a health economist, director of the Partnered Evidence-Based Policy Resource Center (PEPReC) at the Boston VA Healthcare System, senior research scientist at the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and eesearch professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Dr. Garrido has expertise in econometrics, evidence-based policy, geriatrics, palliative care, and behavioral health care. Her research centers around the theme of developing and applying rigorous analytic methods to inform policy and resource allocation decisions. She is a senior associate editor at Health Services Research and is a member of the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) and the Federal Interagency Council on Evaluation Policy.
Dr. Garrido received her PhD in Health Services Research, Policy, and Administration from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and completed an NIMH postdoctoral traineeship in mental health services research at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers University.
Irene Papanicolas is the director of the Center for Health System Sustainability (CHeSS) and professor of health services, policy and practice at the Brown School of Public Health.
Irene’s research is focused on assessing the performance of health systems and furthering the use of health system comparisons to draw insights for national policy makers. Irene leads the International Collaborative on Costs, Outcomes and Needs in Care (ICCONIC) in collaboration with Dr. Jose Figueroa. The ICCONIC Collaborative consists of 16 partners from across North America, Europe and the Pacific who work together to understand patters of health service utilization, costs and outcomes for a clinically diverse group of high-need, high-cost patients.
Affiliated Fellows, Trainees, & Students
Adam Beckman, MD, MBA is a physician dedicated to strengthening primary care and safety-net systems. He is a primary care resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Brookside Community Health Center. Previously, he served as the Special Advisor to U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has co-authored more than forty articles about health policy and public health including in JAMA, The Lancet, and Health Affairs. Adam received his MBA with High Distinction as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School, earned his MD with magna cum laude and honors distinctions from Harvard Medical School, and was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, STAT Wunderkind, and the national recipient of the United States Public Health Service Excellence in Public Health Award.
Kushal is a fourth-year medical student at Harvard. He received his bachelor’s degrees in biology and public policy from Duke University, where he was named a Truman Scholar, and earned master’s degrees in epidemiology and history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to medical school, Kushal worked at organizations including the Food & Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the National Academy of Medicine. His research at HQO focuses on graduate medical education financing and Medicare payment reforms.
Tarun Ramesh is an MD candidate at Harvard Medical School and has worked as a research assistant for Dr. Tom Tsai since 2021. Tarun graduated summa cum laude from the University of Georgia with majors in economics and genetics. He studies healthcare consolidation, provider workforce, and rural health. He has published over a dozen first author articles, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, and JAMA Internal Medicine. His research on the visa policies for international medical graduates was recognized as one of the best abstracts by the 2023 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting. He has worked at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the DHHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Center for American Progress, and the Roosevelt Institute.
Bassel Shanab is a Sarnoff Fellow from the Yale School of Medicine. He holds a BA in Biological Sciences and Global Health Studies from Northwestern University. His academic interests include cardiovascular disease, social determinants of health, health disparities, health policy, and healthcare administration.
David Velasquez, MD, MBA, MPP, is an internal medicine resident physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
His main research interests focus on understanding the policies, systems, and structures that affect the health of vulnerable communities. This has included writing and research on people experiencing homelessness, people with a non-English language preference, people with a high level of social needs, older adults with frailty, the uninsured population, and low-income communities. Dr. Velasquez has also collaborated with organizations across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to improve healthcare access and delivery for vulnerable populations.
Dr. Velasquez received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and his M.P.P. from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Human Biology.