Our Mission
The mission of the Center for Outcomes Research (COR) is to improve healthcare using healthcare outcomes research and by teaching and mentoring clinicians. The COR works closely with other health services researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, including the Wharton School of Business, the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research.
The COR, directed by Jeffrey H. Silber, MD PhD, serves as the central resource in outcomes research methodology for researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. COR faculty serve as investigators on numerous studies from many clinical divisions and departments at both institutions. Children's Hospital faculty collaborating with the COR include members from the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, and the Divisions of General Pediatrics, Cardiology, Emergency Medicine, Infectious Disease, Oncology, Hematology, Pulmonary Medicine and Neonatology. University of Pennsylvania faculty include members from the School of Medicine (Medical Oncology, Surgery, Anesthesiology, General Internal Medicine), the Wharton School of Business (Statistics and Health Care Systems), the School of Arts and Sciences (Psychology and Sociology) and the School of Nursing.
Positions: Director, Center for Outcomes Research; Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesia, and Health Care Systems
Departments: Pediatrics; Anesthesia; Health Care Systems
Education: MD, Johns Hopkins Medical School, 1980; PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1990
Jeffrey Silber, MD, PhD, is the director of the Center for Outcomes Research at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
and a professor of pediatrics and anesthesia at the University
of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, with appointments in the Division of
Oncology and Epidemiology
and Biostatistics. Dr. Silber is also professor of Health Care Systems
at The Wharton
School, where he teaches courses on outcomes research. He is a senior
fellow of the Leonard Davis
Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition he is a pediatric oncologist and an attending physician in the Pediatric
Oncology Survivorship Clinic at Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Silber is a nationally recognized authority on severity adjustment in outcomes
research and is widely published in diverse areas of health services research.
His publications include articles on the selection of outcome measures,
papers concerning severity adjustment for specific outcomes, clinical economic
studies in pediatric and adult populations, and publications based on applications
of multivariate matching in outcomes research. He developed the outcome
measure “failure-to-rescue” in 1990 which became an AHRQ Patient
Safety Indicator, and has conducted numerous studies on the relationship
between death and complication rates as derived from Medicare claims data.
Research Interests: Quality of care, clinical
economics, medical decision making, statistical modeling of predictions
and outcomes, delayed consequences of cancer therapy