Jeffrey H. Silber

Jeffrey H. Silber
  • The Nancy Abramson Wolfson Professor of Health Services Research, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
  • Director, Center for Outcomes Research The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
  • Professor of Pediatrics and Anesthesiology & Critical Care The Perelman School of Medicine
  • Professor of Health Care Management The Wharton School The University of Pennsylvania

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    Center for Outcomes Research
    Roberts Building
    2716 South Street, Room 5123
    Philadelphia, PA 19146-2305

Research Interests: clinical economics, development of new health care outcome measures, health care disparities, measuring health care quality, medical decision making, outcomes of care in cancer, statistical methodogy in outcomes research including multivariate matching

Links: CV, Personal Website

Overview

 

Dr. Silber holds the Nancy Abramson Wolfson Endowed Chair in Health Services Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is a Professor of Pediatrics and Anesthesiology & Critical Care at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Silber is an internationally known authority on outcomes measurement and severity adjustment for both adult and pediatric applications. He created the adult quality of care measure Failure-to-Rescue (FTR) in 1990 that has been adopted as three specific quality measures by the National Quality Forum (NQF). He has also developed two length of stay outcome measures: Prolonged Length of Stay and Conditional Length of Stay, now applied to both pediatric and adult populations. With Paul Rosenbaum he developed the Omega measure that evaluates outcome measures by estimating the relative contribution of patient to hospital characteristics associated with a specific outcome, and the method of Template Matching to compare hospital cost and quality.  He has published extensively on all aspects of the theory of outcomes measure and model development and validation, as well as the applications of outcomes measures to pressing public health issues.  Much of his recent work focuses on the use of multivariate matching when comparing outcomes, specifically with respect to problems in both pediatric and adult medicine and surgery, disparities, and cancer. Dr. Silber has twice been awarded the Article of the Year Award in Health Services Research from AcademyHealth, the leading professional organization concerning Health Services Research in the U.S.

Dr. Silber helped to establish and has served as the Director of the Center for Outcomes Research since its inception in 1997.  The center is a multidisciplinary health services research hub for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania investigators and external academic and institutional collaborators which aims to improve health outcomes through the development, testing and application of innovative, practical metrics which serve as tools to transform the quality and efficiency of health care.

Dr. Silber teaches two courses at the University of Pennsylvania:  HCMG212 – Health Care Quality and Outcomes:  Measurement and Management at the Wharton School and EPI580 – Outcomes Research at the Perelman School of Medicine.

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Research

Teaching

Past Courses

  • EPID5800 - Outcomes Research

    This course is divided into two main parts. The first part addresses issues related to the measurement of quality in health care. Included is a review of the classical structure-process-outcome quality paradigm. The paradigm’s strengths and limitations are addressed. This part especially focuses on outcome measures of quality, and examines the validity of alternative measures. The second part deals with observational, or quasi-experimental, research studies. It addresses the advantages and limitations of alternative designs, and covers the role of clinical risk adjustment in observational studies of medical interventions. It focuses on the problem of selection bias, and reviews recent methods for dealing with this bias, such as instrumental variables. Prerequisite: Introductory course in statistics including regression methods. Permission of instructor if prerequisite is not met.

  • HPR5800 - Outcomes Research

    This course is divided into two main parts. The first part addresses issues related to the measurement of quality in health care. Included is a review of the classical structure-process-outcome quality paradigm. The paradigm’s strengths and limitations are addressed. This part especially focuses on outcome measures of quality, and examines the validity of alternative measures. The second part deals with observational, or quasi-experimental, research studies. It addresses the advantages and limitations of alternative designs, and covers the role of clinical risk adjustment in observational studies of medical interventions. It focuses on the problem of selection bias, and reviews recent methods for dealing with this bias, such as instrumental variables. Prerequisite: Introductory course in statistics including regression methods. Permission of instructor if prerequisite is not met.

  • HPR9900 - Hpr Thesis I

    Each student completes a mentored research project that includes a thesis proposal and a thesis committee and results in a publishable scholarly product. Prerequisite: Course only open to Masters of Science in Health Policy Research students.

  • HPR9901 - Hpr Thesis II

    Each student completes a mentored research project that includes a thesis proposal and a thesis committee and results in a publishable scholarly product. Prerequisite: Course only open to Masters of Science in Health Policy Research students.

Awards And Honors

  • Nancy Abramson Wolfson Endowed Chair of Health Services Research, 2013
  • AcademyHealth Article-of-the-Year, 2011
  • AcademyHealth Abstract-of-the-Year, 2007
  • The Hummeler Research Prize (Article-of-the-Year), Joseph Stokes, Jr. Research Institute, 2003
  • AcademyHealth (formerly Association for Health Services Research) Article-of-the-Year, 2003
  • Samuel P. Martin Health Services Research Award, 2000
  • Ethel Brown Foerderer Fund for Excellence Award, 1997

In the News

  • Check Up: Breast cancer: Why blacks fare worse, Philadelphia Inquirer - 08/25/2013
  • Study finds why black women less likely to survive breast cancer, CBS News - 07/24/2013
  • Health at diagnosis may drive breast cancer survival gap, Reuters - 07/23/2013
  • Black-White Divide Persists in Breast Cancer, New York Times - 07/23/2013
  • Failure and Rescue, The New Yorker - 10/07/2012
  • How aggressive is your hospital?, New York Times - 02/03/2011
  • What and where is the “waste” in health care?, The Incidental Economist - 01/12/2011
  • Children’s hospitals may face financial hardship, Pittsburgh Business Times - 03/08/1999

Knowledge @ Wharton

Activity

Latest Research

Siddharth Jain, Paul R. Rosenbaum, Joseph G. Reiter, Alexander S. Hill, David A. Wolk, Sean Hashemi, Lee A. Fleisher, Roderic Eckenhoff, Jeffrey H. Silber (2022), Risk of Parkinson’s disease after anaesthesia and surgery, British Journal of Anaesthesia , 3.
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In the News

How Forced Labor Scrutiny Shapes Supply Chain Transparency

A study co-authored by Wharton’s Sandra Schafhäutle examines why companies choose to hide their names in public shipping data.…Read More

Knowledge @ Wharton - 2026/06/23
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Awards and Honors

Nancy Abramson Wolfson Endowed Chair of Health Services Research 2013
All Awards