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.

--Academy Health, 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 Center for Health Services Research performs wide-ranging work, which results in transformative best practices to a scale that allows for sustainable impact to the quality of care, clinical outcomes, and the value of the medical experience for clinicians, patients, and administrators. Its scientific core conducts work from within the IU Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research (IU CHSOR) and in the VA HSR&D Center of Excellence on Implementing Evidence-Based Practice (VA CIEBP). These hubs form a campus-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

Doctoral health services researchers focus interdisciplinary expertise on finding systemic solutions to challenges in primary care, specialty and cancer care, mental health, the patient-provider dyad, and health information technology. 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 hospital administrators, clinicians, and patients make turning research into real world practice possible. These collaborative relationships interlink Indiana healthcare systems and the information held in electronic health records with the more than 30 years of clinical and laboratory data stored in the Regenstrief Medical Records System.

Located within the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center and on the edge of the IUPUI campus, the VA HSR&D Center of Excellence on Implementing Evidence-Based Practice is a major site for clinical health services research and training. At the Roudebush VAMC, researchers have invaluable access to the VA's innovative application of electronic tools to healthcare delivery for a positive impact on patient safety, efficiency, and the cost of excellent care. In 2010, Roudebush VAMC maintained its recognition by the American Hospital Association as one of the nation’s Most Wired Hospitals.

The Indiana University Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research (IU CHSOR), located within Regenstrief Institute, Inc. on the IUPUI campus, serves as a local, regional, and national resource for directing healthcare systems research, learning, and transformation into high-quality delivery systems. IU CHSOR and VA CIEBP together have twenty-six core faculty researchers and multiple affiliated investigators, who contribute expertise from a variety of domains within health care, the social sciences, engineering and other disciplines. Their collective expertise stresses research in the following special emphasis areas.

In addition to IU CHSOR and VA CIEBP, Regenstrief’s Center for Health Services Research provides a platform for several research initiatives—led by Regenstrief senior health services research scientists—that focus on implementation, health services research, and education. These nested activities include the Indiana Assertive Community Treatment Center (ACT, Co-Director, M. Salyers), the VA Stroke Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) (L. Williams), the IU Center for Assessment, Mechanisms, and Management of Pain (K. Kroenke & M. Bair), the Indiana Transforming Healthcare Research Initiative (IN•THRI, Director, B. Doebbeling), and the Research in Medical Education Initiative (RIME, A. Cottingham & D. Litzelman).

Since January 2010, Michael Weiner, MD, MPH has directed Regenstrief Institute’s Center for Health Services Research, as well as the VA CIEBP and IU CHSOR. He serves as scientific liaison among these groups and further works to facilitate collaborations among these and entities such as the IU School of Medicine, the Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety, Purdue University, and the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. By actively partnering with these organizations to develop new initiatives, projects, and proposals, Regenstrief HSR expands its potential to improve critical areas of research and healthcare delivery. Core faculty and staff pursue new, and sustain existing, research collaborations through regularly recurring research meeting venues, innovative use of knowledge-sharing technologies, regional and national representation at key conferences and meetings, support for visiting expert consultants on projects as needed, and through ongoing efforts to articulate its vision to partners and potential partners both on and off campus. Regenstrief health services researchers from IU CHSOR and VA CIEBP provide core leadership in translational science initiatives on campus.