The 2018 AcademyHealth Research Meeting poster expo was the largest in the organization's history.
Photos: Hoag Levins

SEATTLE — Attended by the largest crowd in its 36-year history, the 2018 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM) also had the most extensive poster displays in its history – more than 1,600 displayed throughout an acre of exhibit hall documented the latest research underway across all areas of health services research. Dozens of Penn LDI people participated in the two-days of displays, either as poster presenters or interested browsers.

Linda Aiken, PhD, RN, CHOPR Director and Marguerite Daus, a Hillman Scholar in Nursing Innovation and predoctoral student at Penn Nursing
Perelman School of Medicine Assistant Professor Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, displays a poster about a study done in collaboration Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Hawaii

With their poster of a Penn Nursing Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) project on the impact of social support on diabetes self care (above, left) are LDI Senior Fellow Linda Aiken, PhD, RN, CHOPR Director and Marguerite Daus, a Hillman Scholar in Nursing Innovation and predoctoral student at Penn Nursing. Above, right, Perelman School of Medicine Assistant Professor Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, displays a poster about a study done in collaboration Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Hawaii to test a new payment model with 600 primary care physicians. In its first phase, the test has increased care quality by two percent and reduced primary care spending by 3.3 percent.

Penn Perelman School of Medicine student Ulysses (Ace) Isidro with a scientific poster
Shazia Siddique, MD, a fellow in Gastroenterology at the Perelman School with her 2018 AcademyHealth poster

Penn Perelman School of Medicine student Ulysses (Ace) Isidro (above, left) explained his research project performed as a mentee of Penn Medicine’s Amol Navathe, MD, PhD. The goal was to determine if an accurate list of physician groups participating in Medicare bundled payment programs could be assembled from sources other than Medicare’s administrative data. The bottom line answer turned out to be no. The test data set created from open internet sources and other data suppliers turned out not to be as accurate as that based on Medicare’s data. Isidro is a scholar in Penn Medicine’s new Summer Scholars Program for Students Underrepresented in Medicine (SSPSUM) directed by LDI Senior Fellow Carmen Guerra, MD, MSCE, Marisa Rogers, MD, MPH, and LDI Senior Fellow Rachel Werner, MD, PhD, all of the Perelman School. Above, right, Shazia Siddique, MD, a fellow in Gastroenterology at the Perelman School and LDI Associate Fellow, details her study of variability in readmissions among a population of Medicare gastroenterology patients.

Kira Ryskina, MD (above, left), Assistant Professor in the Penn Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine and LDI Senior Fellow, details her study poster
Ashok Reddy, MD, MSHP, former Penn RWJF Clinical Scholar with his 2018 AcademyHealth poster.

Kira Ryskina, MD (above, left), Assistant Professor in the Penn Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine and LDI Senior Fellow, details her study of how long it took for a physicians to visit Medicare patients recently discharged from hospitals into skilled nursing facilities. Her team found most patients were seen within seven days but there was a lot of variation. In the northeast, for instance, average time for the first physician visit was two days; throughout the midwest it was five. “Obviously,” Ryskina said, “the concern is that not being seen by a prescribing clinician or physician may influence outcomes. We saw that a lot of these patients were being readmitted to a hospital from the nursing home with no visit billed by a physician between their initial discharge and latest readmission.” Above, right, Waving down an LDI photographer to say hello to his former colleagues back in Philadelphia was Ashok Reddy, MD, MSHP, former Penn RWJF Clinical Scholar and LDI Senior Fellow. Now an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the University of Washington Division of General Internal Medicine in Seattle, Reddy’s poster detailed a study of how changes in VA medical home team-based interventions affected the volume and costs of emergency department visits over time.

Kalida Saalim of Georgetown University, Ayomide Ojebuoboh of Boston University, Zara Wermers of Tufts University, Christine Olagun-Samuel of Penn, and Janiece Strange of Morgan State University.
Amanda Bettencourt, MSN, RN, discusses her findings with Aoyjai Prapanjaroensin, BSN, RN, of the University of Birmingham School of Nursing

Members of a group of twenty-three 2018 Penn LDI Summer Undergraduate Minority Research (SUMR) scholars (above, left) were attending their first AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting. Exploring the poster displays were (l to r) Kalida Saalim of Georgetown University, Ayomide Ojebuoboh of Boston University, Zara Wermers of Tufts University, Christine Olagun-Samuel of Penn, and Janiece Strange of Morgan State University. Above, right, predoctoral Fellow at Penn Nursing School’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) and LDI Associate Fellow Amanda Bettencourt, MSN, RN, discusses her findings with Aoyjai Prapanjaroensin, BSN, RN, of the University of Birmingham School of Nursing. Bettencourt’s study looked at how nurses grade safety in the pediatric care areas of their hospitals and how those grades relate to the quality of the overall work environment.

Penn Pediatrics Professor Jeffrey Silber, MD, PhD, chats with Lawrence Kleinman, MD, MPH, of Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland
LDI SUMR Scholars Christine Olagun-Samuel and Zara Wermers discuss a poster project that tracks the evolution of Accountable Care Organizations

Strolling the acre of posters in the Washington State Convention Center expo hall Professor of both Pediatrics at the Perelman School and Health Care Management at the Wharton School and LDI Senior Fellow Jeffrey Silber, MD, PhD, chats with Lawrence Kleinman, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Child Health and Policy at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. Above, right, LDI SUMR Scholars Christine Olagun-Samuel and Zara Wermers discuss a poster project that tracks the evolution of Accountable Care Organizations since the launch of the Affordable Care Act.

Matthew McHugh, PhD, JD, MPH of the Penn Nursing Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research talks with Ulrike Muench, PhD, MSN, RN, of the University of San Francisco, and Kyung Mi Kim
Penn's Alexis Zebrowski, MPH, PhD at her AcademyHealth poster about her study of variations in the treatment of traumatic injury in older adults

Matthew McHugh, PhD, JD, MPH (above, left), Penn School of Nursing Professor, Associate Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research and LDI Senior Fellow talks with Ulrike Muench, PhD, MSN, RN, of the University of San Francisco and Kyung Mi Kim. Above, right, Alexis Zebrowski, MPH, PhD candidate in Epidemiology at the Perelman School and LDI Associate Fellow describes her team’s study of variations in the treatment of traumatic injury in older adults.