1204 Blockley Hall
Rachel Werner (PARC Research Associate) recently authored two LDI research updates entitled, Private Equity’s Impact on Nursing Home Quality and When Accountable Care and Bundled Payments Intersect, Patients Benefit.
Rachel Werner (PARC Research Associate) and co-author Paula Chatterjee wrote an article published in JAMA Network Open entitled, "Gender Disparity in Citations in High-Impact Journal Articles." Werner and Chatterjee beg the question: Are academic articles written by men and women in high-impact medical journals cited differently? In this cross-sectional study of 5554 articles, those written by women primary or senior authors had fewer citations than those written by men primary or senior authors. Articles written by women as both primary and senior authors had approximately half the number of citations as those authored by men as both primary and senior authors. These findings suggest that gender-based differences in article citations may be a key contributor to disparities in the advancement and promotion of women in academic medicine. Werner and Chatterjee note, “We must focus on ensuring that women in academic medicine have a level playing field that equally values and promotes their successes.” Their research has since been featured in The Guardian, MedicalXpress, and on the LDI website as a Research Snapshot.
PARC Associates, Julia Lynch, Rachel Werner, and PSC Associate, Sharon Wolf, were featured in Penn Today discussing the unequal effects exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic issues which contribute to these inequalities, and solutions for addressing inequalities in poltics, health care, and education.
Professor of Medicine and Health Care Management
M.D. Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 1998
P.h.D., Department of Health Care Management, The Wharton School, 2004
Dr. Rachel Werner is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Core Investigator with the VA HSR&D Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP). She received her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where she also did her residency in Internal Medicine. While completing a clinical fellowship in general internal medicine, she also received a Ph.D. in health economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Werner’s research seeks to understand the effect of health care policies and delivery systems on quality of care. In particular, she has examined the role of quality improvement incentives on provider behavior, the organization of health care, racial disparities, and overall health care quality. Her work has empirically investigated numerous unintended consequences to quality improvement incentives and was among the first to recognize that public reporting of quality information may worsen racial disparities. She is currently principal investigator of an R01 from the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (examining how pay-for-performance in hospitals changed the value of health care) and an R01 from the National Institute of Aging (examining the effect of Medicaid pay-for-performance for nursing homes on delivery of nursing home care).