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Research Projects

1) CSH Cost Comparison: Assessing the impact of CSH services on hospital cost of patient care

The Center for Surgical Health (CSH) was founded in 2016 with the novel goal of improving access to surgical care in Philadelphia. The impact of a surgical access pipeline like CSH on cost of patient care to hospitals is unknown. To investigate this, this project compares hospital costs of care for patients who obtained surgery at a University of Pennsylvania Health System hospital after securing insurance coverage through CSH to a similar cohort of uninsured patients who did not interact with CSH. 

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Team:

  • Robyn Broach, PhD

  • Angela Chen, MA 

  • Michael Karamardian, BA

  • Omar Ramadan, MD

  • Jordan Swanson, MD, MSc 

2) Surgical Equity Curriculum: Evaluating the introduction of Operation Equity into the contemporary medical education

Disparities in surgical care are widespread and present at every stage of the perioperative continuum, yielding important consequences for patients. To date, education about health disparities has largely been situated outside of surgical disciplines. Moreover, there is limited data on educational programming for early-stage healthcare trainees – such as medical students – focused specifically on the social determinants of surgical health. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of “Operation Equity: An Introduction to the Social Determinants of Surgical Health,” a course offered to a voluntary group of medical students as well as other graduate students.  

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Team:

  • Elizabeth Card, MD

  • Matthew Goldshore, MD, MPH, PhD

  • Niels Martin, MD

  • Carrie Z. Morales, MD

  • Jon Morris, MD

  • Lily Owei, BA

  • Emily Scire, MD

  • Judy Shea, PhD

  • Christopher Wen, BA

  • Cindy Zhao, AB

3) CSH Patient Satisfaction: Evaluating patient satisfaction with CSH surgical care and patient navigation services

The Center for Surgical Health (CSH) treats and connects uninsured and underinsured patients to personal patient navigators (PPNs), who aid patients in completing Emergency Medical Assistance (EMA) or Medicaid applications, provide connections to social and legal services, and assist patients in navigating the health care system. However, CSH lacks objective data regarding patient satisfaction with CSH providers or PPNs, which is crucial to ensuring high-quality and equitable healthcare delivery. This study seeks to evaluate patient satisfaction using a combination of nationally-validated patient satisfaction surveys. Together, these surveys will provide the data necessary to both inform improvements to the current CSH model and guide the creation of future organizations with a similar structure and purpose.  

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Team:

  • Carmen Guerra, MD

  • Chris Herrera, BS

  • Olivia Katz, BA

  • Gina Lepore, BA

  • Omar Ramadan, MD

  • Armaun Rouhi, BA

  • Linda Saikali, BS

  • Kevin Zhang, AB

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