Jack Needleman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor Director, Ph.D. and M.S. programs UCLA School of Public Health Department of Health Services Box 951772 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772 Phone: 310-267-2706 Fax: 310-825-3317 E-mail: needlema@ucla.edu

Biographical Information

Jack Needleman, PhD, FAAN, is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health. He teaches courses in health policy analysis and American political institutions and health policy, and has previously taught program and policy evaluation. He received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.

Dr. Needleman’s research focuses on the impact of changing markets and public policy on quality and access to care. His research on the impact of nurse staffing and nurses’ working conditions on patient outcomes in hospitals and the business case for increasing nurse staffing received the first AcademyHealth Health Services Research Impact Award. His 2006 article on the business case for nursing was the most downloaded Health Affairs article that year. His continuing research in this area is supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Nursing Research Quality Initiative. He is currently leading the team evaluating the RWJF initiative Transforming Care at the Bedside, which is intended to improve the quality, safety, patient-centeredness and efficiency of hospital medical surgical units by engaging front line staff and unit managers in process improvement. He serves on the Nursing Advisory Council of the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. In 2007, he was inducted as an honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Dr. Needleman has directed projects on a wide range of topics, including studies of for-profit and nonprofit hospitals, the impact of community health centers on hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions, the quality of care for Medicaid beneficiaries with diabetes, and changes in access to inpatient care for psychiatric conditions and substance abuse. He has had a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award to study the future of public hospitals. He studied Canadian provisional systems for paying and regulating hospitals, physicians and supplemental health insurers, and regulating new technology.

Prior to coming to UCLA in 2003, Dr. Needleman was on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health and before that was Vice President and Co-Director of the Public Policy Practice at Lewin/ICF, a Washington health policy research and consulting firm. While at Lewin/ICF, he conducted studies and served as a consultant to numerous state and federal task forces examining health care costs and access to care, and evaluated or helped design payment systems for hospitals, physicians and nursing homes.

Selected Publications

Needleman, Jack. "Is What's Good for the Patient Good for the Hospital? Aligning Incentives and the Business Case for Nursing." Journal of Politics, Policy and Nursing Care Forthcoming

Upenieks, Valda, Marjorie Pearson, Tracy Yee, and Jack Needleman. "Spreading Nursing Unit Innovation within Large Hospital Systems." Journal of Nursing Administration 38, no. 3 (2008): 146-52.

Leibson, C. L., J. Needleman, P. Buerhaus, J. A. Heit, L. J. Melton, 3rd, J. M. Naessens, K. R. Bailey, T. M. Petterson, J. E. Ransom, and M. R. Harris. "Identifying in-Hospital Venous Thromboembolism (Vte): A Comparison of Claims-Based Approaches with the Rochester Epidemiology Project Vte Cohort." Medical Care 46, no. 2 (2008): 127-32.

Needleman, Jack, Ellen T. Kurtzman, and Kenneth W. Kizer. "Performance Measurement of Nursing Care: State of the Science and the Current Consensus." Medical Care Research and Review 64, no. 2S (2007): 10S-43S.

Needleman, Jack, Peter I. Buerhaus, Maureen Stewart, Katya Zelevinsky, and Soeren Mattke. "Nurse Staffing in Hospitals: Is There a Business Case for Quality?" Health Affairs 25, no. 1 (2006): 204-11.

Berney, Barbara, and Jack Needleman. "Impact of Nursing Overtime on Nurse Sensitive Patient Outcomes in New York Hospitals, 1995-2000." Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice 7, no. 2 (2006): 87-100.

Falik, Marilyn, Jack Needleman, Robert Herbert, Barbara Wells, Robert Politzer, and M. Beth Benedict. "Comparative Effectiveness of Health Centers as Regular Source of Care: Application of Sentinel Acsc Events as Performance Measures." Journal of Ambulatory Care Management 29, no. 1 (2006): 24-35.

Bazzoli, Gloria J., Richard C. Lindrooth, Romana Hasnain-Wynia, and Jack Needleman. "The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and U.S. Hospital Operations." Inquiry 41, no. 4 (2004): 401-17.

Needleman, Jack, Peter Buerhaus, Soeren Mattke, Maureen Stewart and Katya Zelevinsky, "Measuring Hospital Quality: Can Medicare Data Substitute for All Payer Data?." Health Services Research 2003; 38(6):1487-1508.

Buerhaus, Peter and Jack Needleman, Soeren Mattke and Maureen Stewart, "Strengthening Hospital Nursing." Health Affairs 2002; 21(5):123-132.

Needleman, Jack, Peter Buerhaus, Soeren Mattke, Maureen Stewart and Katya Zelevinsky, "Nurse-Staffing Levels and the Quality of Care in Hospitals," New England Journal of Medicine 2002; 346(22): 1715-1722. Abstracted in The Yearbook of Anesthesiology and Pain Management 2003.

Needleman, Jack, "The Role of Nonprofits in Health Care," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 2001; 26(5):1043-1060.

Marilyn Falik, Jack Needleman, Barbara L.Wells, and Jodi Korb, "Ambulatory Care Sensitive Hospitalizations and Emergency Visits: Experiences of Medicaid Patients Using Federally Qualified Health Centers," Medical Care 2001; 39(6):551-561.

Needleman, Jack, JoAnn Lamphere and Deborah Chollet, "Uncompensated Care and Hospital Conversions in Florida," Health Affairs 1999; 18(4):125-133.

Needleman, Jack, "Nonprofit to For-Profit Conversions by Hospitals, Health Insurers, and Health Plans," Public Health Reports 1999; 114(2):108-119.

Needleman, Jack, Chollet, Deborah J., and Lamphere, JoAnn, "Conversions of Public and Not-for-Profit Hospitals to For-Profit Status," Health Affairs, 1997; 16(2):187-195.

Needleman, Jack, "Sources and Policy Implications of Uncertainty in Risk Assessment." Statistical Science: A Review Journal of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics 1988; 3:328-338.

Bailar, John C., III, Jack Needleman, Barbara Berney and J. Michael McGuiness, editors, Assessing Risks to Health: Methodological Approaches. Westport, CT: Auburn House, 1993.