Dr. Dudley's research is focused on measuring clinical performance and using incentives to improve it. Dr. Dudley has applied both qualitative and quantitative methods to identify important policy issues, such as variation in quality of care, and to study first the feasibility of and then the…
more impact of novel policy responses, including payment reform and public reporting of quality of care. In a series of articles spanning the last decade, Dr. Dudley developed methods to identify organizations whose performance could improve and showed that such improvement was possible. His work led both to business leaders such as the Leapfrog Group realizing that they could influence health care in a positive way and to clinicians and policymakers recognizing that care re-engineering in the VA system had already contributed to dramatic improvement. Dr. Dudley also has led important efforts to advance the science of performance measurement. These include both projects creating novel models to risk-adjust outcomes like intensive care unit mortality and length of stay and survey instruments to capture patient assessments of care. These measures are extensively used in ongoing health care, including by the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce, a collaborative he founded and in which more than 220 hospitals participate. Dr. Dudley's current work involves randomized controlled trials and observational studies of incentive programs and projects to understand the sources of performance variation among providers, especially as relates to disparities in care.
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