She has been involved in the
analysis of issues relating to health care delivery since 1984, when she joined the Health Care Research Unit in the
Section of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Ash's areas of expertise and active research include: the development and
evaluation of models which predict future health care costs as a function of the diagnoses associated with prior
health care use, the use of severity-adjusted measures of outcomes (e.g. mortality, adverse events following surgery,
resource use, and cost) for comparing the performance of policy relevant groups (e.g. individual physicians, hospitals
or provider networks), efficient sampling plans for identifying systemic problems in health service delivery systems
and for providing routine feedback of relevant information, and methodological and policy issues in the use of risk
adjustment to compare providers.
Dr. Ash has been responsible for the design and analysis of dozens of studies, which have used CMS (Center for
Medicare and Medicaid) databases, and application of statistical methods to questions of public policy. She has
served on the Health Services Development Grants study section for AHRQ and received the Administrator's Citation
for CMS for work on Medicare capitation issues. She is Principal Investigator of the Boston University ResDAC team.
Dr. Ash has conducted investigations utilizing these databases to address a number of critical issues in the delivery
of care to women and minorities. These include her investigations in racial and gender differences in end stage renal
disease, cerebrovascular disease, coronary heart disease and congestive heart failure, hip fracture, and breast cancer
screening and therapy. She collaborates actively with Dr. Freund on multiple studies, and Dr. Larry Culpepper on the
Patient Safety Development Center.
Dr. Ash has mentored over 50 trainees and junior faculty at Boston University in study design, use of administrative
databases, and statistical analysis. She is available to serve as a mentor for Scholars, but as Director of the Core
Facility, will play a role in the design and analysis planning for all Scholars.
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