Hector Rodriguez, Ph.D., MPH

Associate Professor Health Services UCLA School of Public Health 31-299A CHS 650 Charles E. Young Drive South PO Box 951772 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772 Phone: (310) 206-3686 Fax: (310) 825-3317 E-mail: hrod@ucla.edu

Biographical Information

Hector P. Rodriguez, PhD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health.  Dr. Rodriguez’s research focuses on understanding the organizational influences on medical care quality and public health system effectiveness, performance measurement, and patients’ experiences of ambulatory care. His work is widely published in prominent peer-reviewed health services and medical journals.

Dr. Rodriguez’s organizational research is focused in three main areas:

1) Clarifying the care team and organizational factors that enable improvements in chronic illness care and patient self-management.   Dr. Rodriguez is leading a research project, in partnership with colleagues from the Veteran’s Affairs’ Center for the Study of Health Care Provider Behavior and the RAND Corporation, as part of the VA Assessment and Improvement Laboratory for Patient-Centered Care (VAIL-PCC) (PI: Lisa Rubenstein, MD, MSPH).  He and his colleagues are examining the extent to which primary care team factors, including team communication, psychological safety, readiness to change and leadership, influence the effective implementation of the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model in the VA system.

2) Improving reliable physician profiling on patient experience measures.   Dr. Rodriguez’s patient experience research, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), examines the effects of differential item functioning (or item-level measurement bias) on physician profiling (performance comparisons) and the measurement of racial & ethnic disparities in patient-reported experiences of primary care.

3) Understanding local health department (LHD) organizational and financial influences on population health indicators. In collaboration with the Public Health Institute (PHI) and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Dr. Rodriguez is examining the extent to which LHD organizational arrangements influence population health indicators over time.  Project ELHDRS (Evaluation of Local Health Department Resources and Systems for Seniors), funded by the RWJF, examines LHD organizational arrangements for senior health promotion and disease prevention in California.

Dr. Rodriguez teaches the required organizational theory course (HS 234) in the in-residence and executive MPH programs and the capstone consulting report course for the in-residence MPH program (HS 400).  He uses interactive teaching methods, e.g., audience response systems, to engage students in the learning process.  He also serves as the faculty advisor for the Management cognate of the PhD program in Health Services Research.

Dr. Rodriguez received his PhD in Health Policy/Medical Sociology from Harvard University, MPH in Health Policy and Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, and BA in Urban Studies and Planning from the University of California, San Diego.

Rodriguez HP, von Glahn T, Rogers WH, Chang H, Fanjiang G, Safran DG. Evaluating patients' experiences with individual physicians: A randomized trial of mail, internet, and interactive voice response telephone administration of surveys. Med Care. 2006; 44(1):67-74.

Rodriguez HP, Rogers WH, Marshall RE, Safran DG. Multidisciplinary primary care teams: effects on the quality of clinician-patient interactions and organizational features of care. Med Care 2007; 45(1):19-27.

Rodriguez HP, Wilson IB, Landon BE, Marsden PV, Cleary PD. Voluntary physician switching by Human Immunodeficiency Virus-infected individuals: A national study of patient, physician, and organizational factors. Med Care 2007; 45(3):189-198.

Rodriguez HP, Rogers WH, Marshall RE, Safran DG. The effects of primary care physician visit continuity on patients' experiences with care. J Gen Intern Med 2007; 22(6):787-793.

Rodriguez HP, von Glahn T, Chang H, Rogers WH, Safran DG. Patient samples for measuring primary care physician performance:  Who should be included? Med Care 2007;45(10):989-996.

Rodriguez HP, Marsden PV, Landon BE, Wilson IB, Cleary PD. The effect of care team composition on the quality of HIV care. Med Care Res Rev. 2008;65(1):88-113.

Rodriguez HP, Rodday AC, Marshall RE, Nelson K, Rogers WH, Safran DG. Relation of patients’ experiences with individual physicians to malpractice risk. Int J Qual Health Care. 2008;20(1):5-12.

Rodriguez HP, Marshall RE, Rogers WH, Safran DG. Primary care physician visit continuity: a comparison of patient-reported and administratively derived measures. J Gen Intern Med. 2008 Sep;23(9):1499-502.

Rodriguez HP, von Glahn T, Grembowski DE, Rogers WH, Safran DG. Physician effects on racial and ethnic disparities in patients' experiences of primary care. J Gen Intern Med. Oct 2008;23(10):1666-1672.

Rodriguez HP, von Glahn T, Chang H, Rogers WH, Safran DG. Measuring patients' experiences with individual specialist physicians and their practices. Am J Med Qual. Jan-Feb 2009;24(1):35-44.

Rodriguez HP, von Glahn T, Rogers WH, Safran DG.  Organizational and market influences on physician performance on patient experience measures. Health Serv Res. 2009; 44(3): 880-901

Rodriguez HP, Scoggins JF, von Glahn T, Zaslavsky AM, Safran DG.  Attributing sources of variation in patients’ experiences of ambulatory care. Med Care. 2009; 47(8):835-841.

Rodriguez HP, von Glahn T, Elliott MN, Rogers WH, Safran DG. The effect of performance-based financial incentives on improving patient care experiences:  A statewide evaluation. J Gen Intern Med. 2009; 24(12): 1281-1288.

Rodriguez HP, Chen J, Rodriguez MA.  A national study of problematic care experiences among Latinos with diabetes.  J Health Care Poor Underserved 2010 (In Press)

Rodriguez HP, Laugesen MJ, Watts CA.  A randomized experiment of issue framing and voter support of tax increases for health insurance expansion. Health Policy. 2010 (In Press)