Bio: Axel Mühlbacher, Dr. rer. oec., a 2010-11 Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, is professor of health economics and health care management at Hochschule Neubrandenberg. His research focuses on health economics and integrated care. Past positions include assistant professor at Technische Universität Berlin and research fellow, German Coordinating Agency of Public Health, Albert-Ludwig Universität Freiburg. He has also served on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Health as academic advisor to the steering committee, "Measures to create a new definition of 'requiring care,' and a new uniform instrument of evaluation" for the National Association of Statutory Health Funds. Mühlbacher is author of 17 peer-reviewed publications and holds a M.Sc. in business administration from Eberhard-Karls Universität (Tübingen) and a Ph.D in economics from the Technical University Berlin.
Placement: Duke University
Mentors: Kevin Schulman, M.D., Professor, Duke Clinical Research Institute; Peter Ubel, M.D., Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Project: Assessing Value in Health Care Delivery Systems: Use of Discrete Choice Experiments to Elicit Patient Preferences
Description: Mühlbacher's project aimed to provide health care policymakers and decision-makers with a comprehensive assessment of patients' views on the relative value of coordinated care. The project had a qualitative and quantitative phase. In the qualitative phase, focus groups and interviews were conducted with patients regarding their preferences for different aspects of coordinated care. In the quantitative phase of the project, a discrete choice experiment was conducted, wherein roughly 700 patient participants were presented with a scenario and given a choice between possible coordinated care interventions. Their choices were analyzed based upon the characteristics of the interventions they chose.