What is Health Services Research?

Health services research is the multidisciplinary field of scientific investigation that studies how social factors, financing systems, organizational structures and processes, health technologies, and personal behaviors affect access to health care, the quality and cost of health care, and ultimately our health and well-being.

--AcademyHealth, 2000

The main goals of health services research are to identify the most effective ways to organize, manage, finance, and deliver high quality care; reduce medical errors; and improve patient safety.

 --Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2002

 

Regenstrief Institute's health services research makes its home in the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research, in concert with the VA Center for Implementing Evidence-Based Practice. These programs form a university-wide laboratory committed to improving the delivery of health care through attention to:

• Patient safety and quality of care
• Patient-provider communication strategies
• Health information technology solutions
• Process improvement and systems interventions

Our team of MD and PhD health services researchers brings expertise in finding systemic solutions to challenges in primary care, specialty and cancer care, mental health, the patient-provider dyad, and health information technology. Through these lenses their work contributes to the science of translation and implementation, and helps original research findings make a successful journey from scientific evidence to sustainable, wide scale implementation.

Partnerships with administrators, clinicians, and patients make turning research into real world action possible. These collaborative relationships interlink Indiana healthcare systems and the information held in their electronic health records with the more than 30 years of clinical and laboratory data stored in the Regenstrief Medical Records System.

Our counterpart research hub is the VA Center of Excellence in Implementing Evidence-Based Practice of the Indianapolis Roudebush VA Medical Center. Roudebush VAMC is a major site for clinical education and training. Recognized by the American Hospital Association as one of the Most Wired Hospitals of 2005,Roudebush carries forward the VA's legacy of innovation in applying electronic tools to healthcare delivery for a positive impact on patient safety, efficiency, and the cost of good care.

Two major new programs are poised to expand the scope and depth of our research:

Indiana ACTION Collaborative

Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks (ACTION) is a national push to bring to scale best practices that address care delivery, patient safety, expansion of health information technology, and healthcare costs. Led by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), ACTION fast tracks federal funding to a few recipients around the country chosen for their ability to define and then implement innovative care strategies. The Indiana ACTION Collaborative is coordinated by the health services research programs of Regenstrief and the VA Center of Excellence.

Indiana Center for Patient Safety (ICPS)

This groundbreaking alliance supports research into root challenges to patient safety that go beyond the reach of any one medical facility. A statewide network of healthcare providers – the Indiana Hospital and Health Association – teams with research partners in the Purdue University Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, VA Center of Excellence in Implementing Evidence-Based Practice, and Regenstrief to share and apply unique resources to improving patient safety. ICPS forms working groups across the health care supply chain, provides training in root-cause analysis and process improvement, and disseminates best practices nationally. The practical experience of its clinical partners drives research, while research likewise drives on-the-ground innovation and improvement on a short time scale.


Other major in-houses health services research and intervention programs include Stroke QUERI , the ACT Center of Indiana , and AHRQ National Resource Center for Health Information Technology.

To learn more, write Administrator Richard Griffith: