Jeffrey H. Silber Faculty Profile

Jeffrey H. Silber
Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesia, and Health Care Management
Director, Center for Outcomes Research, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

PhD, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1990; MD, Johns Hopkins Medical School, 1980; AB, Washington University, St. Louis, 1976

Research Areas
Measuring health care quality; development of new health care outcome measures; statistical methodology for comparing providers; clinical economics; medical decision making; late effects of cancer treatment; outcomes of care in cancer

Current Projects
The effect of provider specialty on the outcomes of ovarian cancer patients, the effect of race on the outcomes of endometrial cancer patients, development of a physiologic index to determine optimal discharge time for very low birth weight infants, surgical time as a measure of unobserved severity, and cost of chemotherapy associated adverse events.

Academic Positions Held
Wharton: 1997-present. University of Pennsylvania: 1983-present (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar, 1983-85; Fellow, Divisons of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 1985-1988; Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, 1985-present; Director, Center for Outcomes Research, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 1997-present). Previous appointment: Johns Hopkins Hospital

Career and Recent Professional Awards; Teaching Awards
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

Representative Publications
(with D. Polsky, T.C. Randall, R.N. Ross and O. Even-Shoshan)
“Variation in Chemotherapy Utilization in Ovarian Cancer: The Relative Contribution of Geography.” Health Services Research (2006).

(with P.R. Rosenbaum, X. Zhang and O. Even-Shoshan)
“The Influence of Patient and Hospital Characteristics on Anesthesia Time in Medicare Patients undergoing General and Orthopedic Surgery.” Anesthesiology (2007).

(with M.G. Weiner, S.J. Ross, J.I. Mathew, A.M. Millman, O. Even-Shoshan and K.R. Fox)
“Estimating the Costs of Chemotherapy-associated Adverse Event Clusters.” Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology (2007).

(with P.R. Rosenbaum, D. Polsky, R.N. Ross, O. Even-Shoshan, J.S. Shwartz, K.A. Armstrong and T.C Randall)
“Does Ovarian Cancer Treatment and Survival Differ by the Specialty Providing Chemotherapy?” Journal Clinical Oncology (2007).

(with Y.P Tabak and R.S. Johannes)
“Using Automated Clinical Data for Risk Adjustment: Development and Validation of Six Disease-Specific Mortality Predictive Models for Pay-For-Performance.” Medical Care (2007).

(with K.G. Volpp, A.K. Rosen, P.R. Rosenbaum, P.S. Romano, O. Even-Shoshan, A. Canamucio, L. Bellini, T. Behringer and A. Lee)
“Mortality Among Patients in VA Hospitals in the First Two Years Following ACGME Resident Duty Hour Reform.” Journal American Medical Association (2007).

(with K.G. Volpp, A.K. Rosen, P.R. Rosenbaum, P.S. Romano, O. Even-Shoshan, Y. Wang, L. Bellini, T. Behringer and A. Lee)
“Mortality Among Hospitalized Medicare Beneficiaries in the First Two Years Following ACGME Resident Duty Hour Reform.” Journal American Medical Association (2007).

(with P.S. Romano, A.P. Rosen, Y. Wang, R.N. Ross, O. Even-Shoshan and K.G. Volpp)
“Failure-To-Rescue: Comparing Definitions to Measure Quality of Care.” Medical Care (2007).