Keynote Speaker

José J. Escarce, MD, PhD

Distinguished Professor, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Along with his professorship at the UCLA Medical School, Escarce also serves as Vice Chair for Academic Affairs in the Department of Medicine, and Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Dr. Escarce has published extensively on a variety of topics including physician behavior, medical technology adoption, racial and socioeconomic differences in health care, and the effects of market forces on access, costs, and quality of care. His research interests and expertise include health economics, managed care, physician behavior, racial and ethnic disparities in medical care, immigrant health and technological change in medicine.

Dr. Escarce is currently working on several projects that address socio-demographic barriers to access in managed care organizations, and is principal investigator of a program project entitled "Health Care Markets and Vulnerable Populations," which uses the MEPS and is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Among other issues, the program project addresses racial and ethnic differences in access to and quality of medical care. He was member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.

In his academic career, Dr. Escarce has received numerous Federal and foundation grants and has published more than 160 research articles on a variety of topics, including patient and physician behavior under economic incentives; Medicare payment systems; racial and socioeconomic differences in medical care; medical technology diffusion; the health care workforce; the effects of market forces on access, costs, and quality of health care; and neighborhood effects on health.

At UCLA, he mentors masters and doctoral students and teaches courses on the U.S. health care system and on social determinants of health. Dr. Escarce has previously served on numerous Federal and non-Federal committees, including several Institute of Medicine committees. He has also served as Deputy Editor of the journal Medical Care and for 7 years as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Health Services Research, one of the leading journals in its field.

Dr. Escarce was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science in 2008. Dr. Escarce received an AB from Princeton University in 1975, an MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981 and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania Health Care Systems Department in 1996. He completed his dissertation “Do Relative Fees Affect Utilization of Surgical Procedures Under Medicare?” under the direction of Mark Pauly, PhD