Greetings MSHP Community,

Fall is officially here, and with it, we are happy to welcome our newest cohort of MSHP students and to send the first of our series of MSHP newsletters.

The 2018-19 year is looking like a bright one for the program. Our newest cohort is comprised of 22 students hailing from as far as San Francisco’s Highland Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic and as near as Temple and CHOP.

Among them, we welcome two medical students, two post-doc nurse researchers, one pharmacist and 17 physicians representing the specialties of cardiology, emergency medicine, family planning, hematology/oncology, internal medicine, pediatrics, and pulmonary and critical care medicine. The diversity of clinical perspectives is what drives our program and creates a dynamic and effective community of researchers.

We had 20 graduates in the 2017-2018 school year. Five graduates continued their training, three as VA fellows and two returning to surgical residencies at HUP and Mt Sinai hospitals. 65% of graduates took academic jobs at places such as the University of Pennsylvania, CHOP, the VA, University of Minnesota George Washington University, Yale University, and Oregon Health and Science University. They have a variety of job descriptions and have negotiated inventive ways to pursue academic interests alongside their clinical roles. For example, one graduate splits her time between CHOP and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. Another graduate is to become Virginia Medicaid’s Chief Clinical Innovation Officer in October, and yet another has become the first Darney/Landy Fellow for Family Planning at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Washington, D.C.

We are extremely proud of the Class of 2018 and so excited to see what the future holds for each and every one of them!

New Classes

Health Care Strategic Leadership & Business Acumen
Led by David Grande , MD, MPA in partnership with Guy David , PhD , this weeklong intensive course aims to develop the leadership skills essential for thriving in a constantly changing health care ecosystem. Taught by invited faculty who have experience working with health care leaders, this course focuses on actionable knowledge in financial acumen, strategic decision making, innovation, and building high-performance teams. Through interactive mixed-mode delivery methods, faculty share tools and frameworks, always with a focus on how to apply them, both personally and within an organizational context.
 
Applied Predictive Modeling for Health Services Research
Taught by MSHP alumnus, Gary Weissman , MD, MSHP, this course offers an introduction to the principles and applications of predictive modeling. It is geared toward health services researchers with an emphasis on clinical and policy scenarios and the use of electronic health records and administrative claims data. The primary goals of this course are to help each student understand 1) the fundamental concepts of predictive modeling and what distinguishes it from traditional causal inference approaches in statistics, 2) the different evaluation metrics for model performance and their appropriate use, and 3) the role of domain knowledge in developing a statistical plan for model development with the end-user in mind. Students build their own predictive models by the end of the course.
 
David A. Asch Medical Student Scholars in Health Services Research

The Penn Master of Science in Health Policy Research ( PennMSHP ) is pleased to announce the inaugural David A. Asch Medical Student Scholars in Health Services Research: Katharine (Kara) Freeman and Solymar Torres Maldonado (pictured above). Both Kara and Solymar are rising MS4 students at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and have been accepted to the MD/MSHP combined degree program . They started their PennMSHP coursework in July 2018.

This new scholarship is named after Penn faculty member, David A. Asch, MD, MBA , in recognition of his founding role and ongoing impact on the PennMSHP, as well as his significant contributions to the health services research field. Asch Medical Student Scholars will receive training to become tomorrow's leaders in academic medicine, health policy and health system administration. Each scholarship covers 100% of PennMSHP tuition.

New Website - Coming soon!

Stay turned for our new website, featuring program updates, alumni and current student highlights, faculty and mentor information, health policy research resources at Penn, and more!
 
Current Student Research Feature
 
Second year,  Emily MacKay , DO, recently co-authored a piece in the Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia called  Practice Pattern Variation in the Use of Transesophageal Echocardiography for Open Valve Cardiac Surgery . The study is a retrospective cohort analysis using private claims to estimate the overall rate of intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) among patients undergoing open mitral or aortic valve surgery between the years of 2010 and 2015. The findings revealed that one in six patients were not receiving the recommended practice of intraoperative TEE during cardiac valve surgery with marked geographic variation evident across US states. Increasing adherence to intraoperative TEE may represent an unrecognized opportunity to improve the quality of cardiac surgical care.

Sincerely,