Biography

Quality improvement is never easy. But Katie Coleman, MSPH, is finding strategies that make it easier to integrate what's known about how best to care for patients into daily practice. Her work aims to improve the quality, equity, and long-term viability of outpatient care in the United States.

At the MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation, Ms. Coleman is interested in gathering knowledge about how best to deliver, organize, and finance health care—and translating it into practice. She focuses especially on improving the quality of primary care for patients and providers.

As part of her interest in exploring methods to help primary care practices improve care, Ms. Coleman, with collaborators at the Commonwealth Fund and Qualis Health, works with practice facilitators to help 65 safety-net practices across the country become patient-centered medical homes (PCMH). This effort strengthens the partnerships between patients and their primary care physicians.

Ms. Coleman also provides technical assistance to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Aligning Forces for Quality AF4Q initiative, which aims to improve the care of Americans in 17 regions that together cover 12.5 percent of the U.S. population.

Ms. Coleman has also published important findings that have clarified the limitations of pay-for-performance programs in improving outcomes for chronically ill patients. She has also contributed to early work evaluating the Kaiser Permanente Washington Patient Centered Medical Home demonstration and the VA's Patient Aligned Care Team initiative.