Bio: Martin Gallagher, M.B.B.S., FRACP, a 2009-10 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, is a nephrologist at Concord Hospital in New South Wales and a senior research fellow at the George Institute for International Health. He is also currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program and chair of the Steering Committee of Caring for Australians with Renal Impairment, the national renal guidelines body for Australia and New Zealand. Previous positions include chair of the National Chronic Disease Strategy Reference Group for the Australian Department of Health and Ageing and chair of the NICS Venous Thromboembolism Prevention Program Advisory Committee, overseeing a national program involving 39 hospitals that saw significant increases in the use of proven preventive treatments. He also previously directed a hospital-wide quality improvement program at The Canberra Hospital. Gallagher's research centers on quality improvement, particularly on the uptake of evidence-based treatment guidelines.
Placement: Yale University
Mentors: Elizabeth Bradley, Ph.D., Yale School of Public Health; Harlan Krumholz, M.D., S.M., Yale School of Public Health
Project: International Comparison of Hospital Outcomes Using ICD Coding and Risk Standardization
Description: Martin Gallagher sought to compare mortality and readmission rates between Australian and U.S. hospitals. As part of this project, he tested the feasibility of using U.S. methods for calculating hospital outcomes using Australian administrative data. He used data from the Centre for Health Record Linkage at Sydney University, and risk standardization models developed at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at Yale University for public reporting the U.S.