Research
My research draws on health services research, economics, and policy evaluation to study access to care and provider behavior. In one line of work, I use audit studies and facility surveys to capture access to care and the availability of evidence-based services. A second evaluates how providers respond to changes in insurance coverage, payment, and regulation. A third studies how ownership, consolidation, and facility entry and exit are associated with access.
Lines of work
-
Measuring real-world access barriers
Audit and survey methods that capture what patients experience when seeking care.
Using secret shopper audits and national facility surveys, I capture treatment availability, wait times, cost, and quality from the perspective of patients seeking care. These studies have included buprenorphine prescribers, residential addiction treatment programs for adults and adolescents, psychiatric hospitals, and primary care clinics serving Medicare patients. My job market paper used AI voice agents to call nearly 15,000 primary care clinics.
-
Policy levers and delivery-system response
How providers respond to changes in Medicaid, Medicare, and federal regulation.
This work evaluates how providers respond to policy changes intended to improve access to and quality of care. Examples include Medicaid Section 1115 substance use disorder IMD waivers, Medicare coverage of opioid treatment programs, COVID-era telehealth flexibilities for opioid use disorder, prior-authorization requirements, and access to crisis intervention teams. Methods include difference-in-differences designs, a national survey of buprenorphine prescribers, and descriptive analyses of facility data.
-
Market structure and provider behavior
How ownership, consolidation, and facility entry and exit relate to access and treatment delivery.
I use industrial organization frameworks to study how market structure is associated with provider behavior and patient access. Papers study health-system affiliation and primary care access for new Medicare patients, the role of facility entry and exit in the effects of Medicaid waivers, and private equity acquisition of substance use disorder treatment facilities.