Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice
Home & Hospice Care of Rhode Island
121 South Main Stteet
Providence
RIUSA
02912
Email:
joan_teno@brown.edu
Biographical Sketch: A central focus of my research career has been on conducting research with the aim of improving the quality of care for seriously ill and dying persons. Over the past 20 years, my research has used both large administrative databases to examine the quality of care for seriously ill persons and created survey measures to examine the key domains of the quality of care for persons serious, progressive illness that will result in death. I was very fortunate to work as one of the lead investigators in the Study to Understand Prognoses and Preferences for Risks of Treatment (SUPPORT) heading up the analytic work at the National Coordinating Center to design the evaluation of the SUPPORT study. Post the SUPPORT study, my research has focused on the development of the Family Evaluation of Hospice Care survey which is a NQF endorsed quality measure that is used by the majority of hospice programs in the US. A second focus has been analyses of merged Medicare Claims Files and Minimum Data Set to study the variation in the use of feeding tubes in the US with a key finding being the association of health care transitions and the rate of feeding tube insertion. I am a board certified internist with added qualification in geriatrics and palliative medicine. Despite my primary career focus as a health services researcher, I work as a hospice medical director overseeing the care of persons dying in nursing homes and our 24-bed hospice inpatient unit. This clinical experience is invaluable in motivating questions that matter in improving the quality of care for seriously ill and dying persons.