Biography

Dr. Saver joined the department after serving 15 years (with time off for good behavior) as faculty at the University of Washington.  After college, he carried out obscure enzyme kinetics experiments for 3 years before abandoning research forever to go to medical school and become a family doctor.  After residency, he worked in community settings for 3 years in the Bay Area.  Frustration with difficulty obtaining services for his indigent patients led him to get an MPH in Seattle and, eventually, he ended up back in research along with practicing in public sector settings and teaching.  In his spare time, he tries to help raise 2 boys and endangered Asian box turtles (in separate enclosures, of course) and occasionally produces poorly-drawn cartoons.

Mentoring

Dr. Saver is happy to discuss research interests and ideas with anyone who can’t be convinced to do something more useful and productive with his or her life.  Ideally, but not necessarily, this would at least vaguely overlap with some of his research interests and experiences as outlined above. 

Education     

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, M.D., 1983
Family Medicine Residency: UCLA Center for Health Sciences, 1986
Preventive Medicine Residency: University of Washington, School of Public Health
and Community Medicine, M.P.H., 1991

Research

Dr. Saver has a wide range of research interests, including traditional health services research on issues of access, cost, and quality for disadvantaged populations, and cost-effective interventions for improving care for common conditions encountered in primary care.  He has conducted research in a variety of areas including access to care and health insurance, racial and ethnic disparities in health care, effects of financial incentives on health care costs, quality, and utilization, use of preventive services, tobacco cessation, childhood asthma, and prescription drug benefits, costs, and utilization.  Currently, he is particularly interested in developing and testing interventions that empower patients to take a more active role in managing their health conditions. 

Scholarly Activity

Project Director, co-Investigator, “Breast Cancer Policy and Practice.” Funded by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, grant number R01 HS06545, 9/1/91-9/30/94, Thomas R. Taylor, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator.  Study of physician policies and practices in mammography screening.

Principal Investigator, “Access to Ambulatory Care by the Indigent.”  Funded by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, grant number R03 HS07253, 9/30/93-9/29/96, $49,993.  Analysis of access to care data measures using the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey.

Project Director, co-Investigator, “Physicians’ Policies in Preventive Hormone Therapy.”  Funded by the National Institute on Aging, R01 AG12381, 9/30/94-3/31/98, Thomas R. Taylor, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator.  Study of physician and patient decision making in utilization of postmenopausal hormone therapy.

Project Director, co-Investigator, “Antitrust Issues in Rural Managed Care.”  L. Gary Hart, Ph.D., Principal Investigator.  Subcontract with Washington State Department of Health on Robert Wood Johnson Foundation State Health Reform Grant to Washington State, 4/1/96-12/31/96.

Project Director, co-Investigator, “Barriers to Residency Training in Rural Areas.”  With L. Gary Hart and other members of the WAMI Rural Health Research Center, funded by a Center grant from the Office of Rural Health Policy, HRSA, 4/1/97-9/30/97.

Project Director, co- Investigator, “Decision Support for Preventive Hormone Therapy.”  Funded by the National Instituted on Aging and the National Institute for Nursing Research, R01 AG12381-04A1, 4/1/98-4/30/03, $1,239,566.  Thomas R. Taylor, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator.  Project to develop and test a Web-based decision support to help women with health decisions during and after the menopause.

Principal Investigator, “Investigation into Specialty Payment:  Effects on Costs and Treatments” (“INSPECT”).  Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 5/1/98-10/31/00, $365,581.  Study of effects of different methods of paying for specialty services by HMOs on services received by patients and costs of care.

Principal Investigator, “Uninsured in America:  Individual and Community Factors.”  Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 3/1/99-5/31/00, $100,768. Study of effects of individual, community, and state-level factors on the decision to purchase individual health insurance and on access to care by uninsured persons.

Principal Investigator, “Prescription Benefits as a Quality Measure.”  Funded by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, grant number 1 R01 HS10318, 9/30/99-9/29/02, $617,145.  Study of how health care quality and outcomes for Medicare enrollees in an HMO are affected by having or not having coverage for prescription medications and the level of coverage for those with this benefit.

Project Director, co-Investigator, “Sustained Treatments Over the Perinatal Period (STOPP).”  Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Smoke Free Families initiative, 10/00-12/03.  Mark P. Doescher, MD, MSPH, Principal Investigator.  Randomized, controlled trial among pregnant women who smoke and have family members who smoke of proactive nurse outreach with motivational interviewing, urinary cotinine feedback, and free nicotine replacement therapy for family members.

Co-Investigator, “Prescription Benefits and Costs of Care.”  Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization initiative, 11/1/00-04/30/03, $100,000.  Mark P. Doescher, MD, MSPH, Principal Investigator.  Extend AHCPR/AHRQ-funded prescription benefits analyses to include associations with costs of care, both for medications and total costs of care.

Principal Investigator, “Bridging the Gap – Using Qualitative Approaches to Understand and Address Quantitative Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health.”  Advanced Research Training Grant from the American Academy of Family Physicians, 9/01-8/03, $99,997.

Co-Investigator, “Asthma RAPPORT (Registry and Phone: Patient Outcomes Research Trial).”  Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Improving Chronic Illness Care Initiative, 3/01-5/03, $118,517.  Mark P. Doescher, MD, MSPH, Principal Investigator.  RCT of registry creation and proactive telephone-based outreach to improve asthma care for children attending Washington State community and migrant health centers.

Co-Principal Investigator, “Evaluation of Credentialing, Privileging and Peer Review Options for Critical Access Hospitals.”  Contract N11390 with the Washington State Department of Health, 11/02-8/03, $40,000.  Contract to explore options for Washington State Critical Access Hospitals to meet Medicare requirements for credentialing and quality assurance activities.

Co-Investigator, “Paying for Performance: The Effects of Incentives on the Quality of Health Services.”  Funded by the Center for Health Management Research, 1/1/03-9/30/04, $164,000.  Douglas Conrad, PhD, MBA, MHA, Principal Investigator.  Quantitative/qualitative study of “payment for quality” incentives in medical groups associated with health organizations in 8 different market areas across the US.

Principal Investigator, “Do Statins Ameliorate Periodontal Disease?”  Funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, grant number 1 R21 DE015619-01, 12/03-11/06, $200,000.  Epidemiologic study seeking to determine whether use of statins ameliorates the course of chronic periodontal disease.

Co-Investigator, “The Non-Cancer Care of Elderly Colorectal Cancer Patients.”  Funded by the National Cancer Institute, grant number 1 R01 CA104935-01, 4/15/04-2/28/07.  Study of the influence of a stage 1-3 colorectal cancer diagnosis on receipt of preventive and chronic illness care by Medicare beneficiaries.

Co-Investigator, “Role of Physicians and Their Groups in Cancer Screening.”  Funded by the National Cancer Institute, grant number 1 R21 CA104264-01A1, 9/1/04-8/31/06, $180,000.  George Wright, PhD, Principal Investigator.  Study seeking to map practicing physicians to their medical groups and evaluate how much group affiliation predicts performance of cancer screening.