Bio: Ciaran O'Neill, a 2001-02 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy, is a reader in health economics and policy at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. Before taking up his current position he was a lecturer in health economics at the University of Nottingham and a lecturer in economics at the Queens University of Belfast. He also spent just over a year as a senior consultant economist at the HELM Corp. in Northern Ireland. O'Neill was director of the first master's in health economics and management course offered in Ireland and co-founder and chair of the Health Economics Association of Ireland. He acts as advisor to the Northern Ireland Assembly's Health Committee, serves on the Northern Ireland Forum for Health and Social Care Research, and has published more than 30 peer-reviewed academic papers as well as numerous reports on a variety of economics and health issues. His research interests include the economics of care for older persons, health technology assessment, and health and health care in its social context.
Placement: RAND Corporation
Mentors: Robert Brook, M.D., Sc.D.
Project: Defining and Rating Quality in Nursing Home Care
Description: O'Neill's study investigated the relationship between nursing home quality and a range of potentially related factors, including for-profit/non-profit status. He used data on over 1,000 nursing homes in California, collected by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), the On-line Survey Certification and Reporting System (OSCAR), and state licensing and statistical reports. Multivariate techniques were used to examine the relationship between deficiency citations (a commonly used measure of quality) and possible explanatory variables.