Joel S. Weissman, Ph.D., is a health services researcher trained as a Pew Scholar in the doctoral program at the Heller School at Brandeis University. He is a an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine and the Institute for Health Policy at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and a member of the Department of Health Care Policy at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Weissman currently divides his time among several roles at the Institute for Health Policy. For the last six years he has served as Project Director for The Commonwealth Fund Task Force on Academic Health Centers.

Dr. Weissman is principal investigator on a number of funded investigations including projects examining the relation of hospital crowding to medical errors, the public health effects of direct-to-consumer-advertising of prescription drugs, the quality of care in teaching hospitals (Co-PI with John Ayanian), and state-level effects of access to care by uninsured and low income persons (co-PI with John Ayanian). Dr. Weissman also is a co-investigator on projects evaluating the adoption of health-based risk adjustment methods by health insurers and providers, improving medication safety across clinical settings, evaluating the Massachusetts mandatory error reporting system (PI on subcontract), and evaluating the GME components of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act.

Dr. Weissman's main research interests lie in the areas of health care financing, the effects of competition on health system behavior, access to care, and measurement issues associated with access, quality of care, and risk adjustment. Since joining the unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, he has applied his background in health care finance and organization to studying the effect of market forces on academic health centers and their missions of education, research, technology transfer, and indigent care.

He has written extensively on the use of health services by uninsured persons, including studies of delays in care, uncompensated hospital care, and variations in rates of avoidable hospitalizations by insurance status. In 1994 he published a book (co-authored by Arnold M. Epstein, M.D.) entitled, "Falling Through the Safety Net: Insurance Status and Access to Care," under Johns Hopkins University Press. The book, with a forward by Hillary Rodham Clinton, examined how the availability and type of health insurance affect the amount, location, and quality of health care received.

Dr. Weissman also has studied health services issues surrounding the care of patients with AIDS, and has examined measures of quality of care including readmissions, appropriateness of cardiac revascularization, and patient satisfaction. Among other activities, Dr. Weissman chairs a study group on access to care for the American Public Health Association, leads the Massachusetts General Hospital Group on Health Care Disparities, and teaches a course with Arnold Epstein, MD, on health services research at the Harvard School of Public Health.