As important as family and community are to health, real progress in treating medical problems ultimately requires study of the large organizations in which medical treatment is received. David Meltzer is studying ways to improve general medicine care in the University of Chicago hospitals through a randomized trial of the use of physicians who specialize in inpatient care versus those who also maintain outpatient practices. Willard Manning is working on improvements to the care of patients following acute-care episodes. Mark Rudberg studies the determinants of declining function in nursing-home patients. He is devising measures of the quality of care in nursing homes that will help nursing homes to improve and state regulatory agencies to monitor their performance better.
Substance abuse presents special challenges to medical treatment.
Willard Manning studies how managed care fares in treating alcohol abuse. Peter Friedmann examines drug treatment programs. Awards to support the career development of younger scholars are a vital support to our research in this area, freeing scholars from clinical and teaching duties to dedicate more time to research. Marshall Chin has been investigating the effects of patient race and physician specialty on the outcomes of older persons with diabetes and congestive heart failure. David Meltzer has studied the impact of expectations of economic compensation on self-reported preferences for different health and disability states.