Deborah Peikes, Visiting Lecturer of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, was awarded the AcademyHealth Article of the Year Award and the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation's 16th Annual Health Care Research Award for "Effects of Care Coordination on Hospitalization, Quality of Care, and Health Care Expenditures Among Medicare Beneficiaries: 15 Randomized Trials," recently published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The article, co-authored by Peikes and her colleagues at Mathematica Arnold Chen, Jennifer Schore, and Randall Brown, examined whether care coordination programs reduced hospitalizations and Medicare expenditures and improved quality of care for chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries. Peikes and her co-authors studied eligible fee-for-service Medicare patients -- primarily with congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, and diabetes -- who volunteered to participate between April 2002 and June 2005 in 15 care coordination programs, and were  randomly assigned to treatment or control (usual care) status.

Peikes found that despite being widely touted, only 2 of the 15 programs clearly reduced hospitalizations. One of those programs and a third program with moderate but not statistically significant differences were likely cost neutral, and none generated savings. While physicians and patients liked the programs, there were only scattered and small effects on quality measures. Peikes concluded that programs with substantial in-person contact that target moderate to severe patients can be cost-neutral and improve some aspects of care. Viable care coordination programs would likely need to add a strong transitional care component to yield Medicare savings.

The AcademyHealth Award recognizes leading researchers in different stages of their careers for significant contributions toward the fields of health services research and policy. W. David Helms, President and CEO of AcademyHealth said, "these prestigious awards, each independently selected by distinguished leaders from our field, honor new and established leaders whose research advances policy and practice to improve health and health care.”

The NIHCM Foundation’s award, which comes with a $10,000 prize, recognizes outstanding work from researchers furthering innovation in health care financing, delivery, and organization or implementation of health care policy.

Peikes is a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research in Princeton, NJ. She has evaluated primary care transformation programs, employment promotion policies for people with disabilities, disease management programs for Medicare beneficiaries, health insurance expansions for low-income children, and foundation programs. Prior to working at Mathematica, she worked at the Inter-American Development Bank, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Center for Health Care Strategies. She received her M.P.A. and Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School.