Planning for the 2009 Applied Statistics Workshop

Dear past participants,

The planning committee for the 2009 Applied Statistics
Workshop needs your input. We will use this information to
aid in our choice of topic, speaker, location and day of
the week. Please follow the following link to a short survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Pr_2fmPYxUAjYgRaYHym_2fn2Q_3d_3d

Thank you for your time. If you have any additional
questions or comments, please contact Olga Korosteleva at okoroste@csulb.edu

The Southern California Chapter of the American Statistical Association presents

The 27^th Annual Workshop in Applied Statistics

The Vital Importance of Adjusting for Patient Risk:

Risk Adjustment in Health Services Research

Professor Arlene Ash, Boston University

Friday, March 28

The Pointe at the Pyramid

California State University at Long Beach

Includes workshop, course materials, lunch with vegetarian option, snacks during breaks, door prizes, and discounts with most attending book/software vendors.

Abstract

This workshop will provide an introduction to the major conceptual, practical, technical and policy issues related to risk adjustment. Specific topics to be covered include the need for risk adjustment, the major dimensions of risk, the strengths and limitations of different data sources for risk adjustment, the use of multivariable models for risk adjustment, performance measures for risk adjustment models, and propensity scores and instrumental variables as enhancements to standard modeling.

ARLENE ASH, PHD (mathematics), is a Research Professor of General Internal Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine and of Biostatistics in the BU School of Public Health and director of BUSM's Health Care Research Unit. Dr. Ash pioneered methods for using administrative data to monitor and manage health care delivery systems, including Medicare. She has conducted many studies with Medicare data, and is a key developer of the Diagnostic Cost Groups (DCGs) methods that underlie Medicare payments to HMOs. She has served as an expert witness on a range of public policy issues and testified before Congress regarding Medicare payment reform.

In 1996, she co-founded DxCG, Inc., a company with over 350 national and international clients that promotes "fair and efficient health care" via predictive software. Recently, she has worked with the German government to develop tools for equitable payment reform. Many of Dr. Ash's more than 150 research publications reflect her long-standing interests in: quality, equity and efficiency in health care financing and delivery; methodological issues associated with risk adjustment; and, gender, age and racial disparities.

Dr. Ash is a Fellow of AcademyHealth and of the American Statistical Association, a Past-Chair of ASA's Health Policy Statistics Section, a winner of an American Public Health Association Statistics Section's Outstanding Statistician award in 2003, and the 2008 recipient of AcademyHealth's 2008 Health Services Research Impact Award.