Susan DesHarnais

Biography

Susan DesHarnais is a recognized leader and professor who has developed and taught both graduate and undergraduate level courses on health care quality, patient safety, research methods, and population health.  She has also taught these subjects to physicians and medical students in various programs that she has developed.  She has advanced the science of comparative outcomes analysis by developing severity and risk-adjustment models for the purpose of large-scale patient outcomes research.  She has worked with several large data sets, including Medicaid, Medicare, insurance claims and the National Cancer Data Base. Her work on health literacy, health disparities, chronic illness, mental illness/substance abuse, and palliative care has helped to address quality and safety issues as well as several of the larger policy issues that are driving rising health costs in America. 

Selected Publications

DesHarnais, S., and Simpson, K.  "Indices for Monitoring Hospital Outcomes in Developed Countries." Health Policy 21 (May, 1992): 1-15. 

DesHarnais, S. and Genovich-Richards, J.  "HQEF: Master's Degree Programs: Guidelines for a Concentration in Healthcare Quality Management." Journal of Quality Assurance, October, 1992.

DesHarnais, S., Marshall, B. and Dulski, J.  "Information Management in an Age of Managed Competition." Quality Review Bulletin, November, 1994.   

DesHarnais, S., Simpson, K. and Paul, J.  "Variations in Practice Patterns: Antiviral Drug Use in Hospitalized Patients with Herpes Infections." American Journal of Medical Quality 11(1):33-42, Spring, 1996.   

Rice, T., Stearns, S., DesHarnais, S., Pathman, D., Tai-Seale, M. and Brasure, M.  “Do Physicians Cost Shift?” Health Affairs 15(3):215-25, Fall, 1996.   

DesHarnais, S., Forthman, M.T., Homa-Lowry, J.M. and Wooster, L.D. “How to Use Risk-Adjusted Quality Indicators to Assess Hospitals” QRC Advisor 13(5), March, 1997. 

DesHarnais, S., Forthman, M.T., Homa-Lowry, J.M. and Wooster, L.D. “Risk-Adjusted Quality Outcome Measures:  Indexes for Benchmarking Rates of Mortality, Complications, and Readmissions” Journal of Rehabilitation Outcomes Measurement 1(6):59-65, December, 1997.   

DesHarnais, S.I., Forthman, M.T., Homa-Lowry, J.M. and Wooster, L.D.  “Risk-Adjusted Quality Outcome Measures:  Indices for Benchmarking Rates of Mortality, Complications, and Readmissions.”  Quality Management in Health Care 5(2):80-87, Winter, 1997.  

DesHarnais, Susan; Carter, Rickey E; Hennessy, Winnie; Kurent, Jerome E.; “Discussions about End-of-Life Care: Concordance of Physician and Patient Reports” Journal of Palliative Medicine, Vol. 10 no. 3, June 2007. 

Comacho, F., DesHarnais, S., Wassner, S., Primary Hypertension in a Pediatric Population.  Pediatrics December, 2009.24(12):2421-8 

DesHarnais, S., and Nash, D., Reforming the Way Medical Students and Physicians are Taught about Quality and Safety, Mt. Sinai J Med, Nov-Dec 2011, 834-41. 

Nedza, S., Fry, D., DesHarnais, S., "Emergency Department Visits Following Joint Replacement Surgery in an Era of Mandatory Bundled Payments" Academic Emergency Medicine, Volume 24, Issue 2, Pages 137–264, Feb., 2017.

Professional Memberships / Affiliations

• American Public Health Association 
• Academy for Health Services Research 
• Association of Professors in Health Administration 

Professional Service

• Served on several Study Sections for NIH
• Consulting on Risk Adjustment Methods and Quality of Care issues for no less than 12 organizations over multiple decades

Teaching

• HLTH 207: Health Care in the U.S.
• HCMN 305: Health Administration