Rachel M. Werner

Dr. Rachel Werner is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Core Investigator with the VA HSR&D Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP).  She received her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where she also did her residency in Internal Medicine.  While completing a clinical fellowship in general internal medicine, she also received a Ph.D. in health economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Werner’s research seeks to understand the effect of health care policies and delivery systems on quality of care.  In particular, she has examined the role of quality improvement incentives on provider behavior, the organization of health care, racial disparities, and overall health care quality.  Her work has empirically investigated numerous unintended consequences to quality improvement incentives and was among the first to recognize that public reporting of quality information may worsen racial disparities.  She is currently principal investigator of an R01 from the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (examining how pay-for-performance in hospitals changed the value of health care) and an R01 from the National Institute of Aging (examining the effect of Medicaid pay-for-performance for nursing homes on delivery of nursing home care).