Vicki Fung, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Bio
Dr. Fung is a health services researcher whose research focuses on health care financing and policy, with a focus on insurance coverage and access to care for vulnerable populations. This research aims to identify approaches that can improve patient outcomes, while also lowering costs, by addressing the complex needs of patients who are at greater risk of facing financial and non-financial barriers to necessary medical care. Dr. Fung leads multiple federally funded studies that examine the effects of changes in health care financing, including in Medicaid, Medicare, and for federally qualified health centers, on medical care use, outcomes, spending, and disparities in care. She also collaborates on studies that examine the post-Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance market, the effects of value-based insurance policies, and interventions to improve care delivery and outcomes for patients with serious mental illness. Her studies bridge multiple types of data, including data from administrative claims data, electronic health records, patient and provider surveys, and area-level data, and explore approaches for maximizing the value of electronic data sources.
Dr. Fung received her undergraduate degree in economics from Yale University and completed her doctoral training in health services research, with a focus on health economics, at the University of California, Berkeley. She received post-doctoral training at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
Current Projects
National Institutes of Health
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with and without Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias
Goals: To assess and refine study variable definitions given data collected during the pandemic; to examine the impact of changes in outpatient care on clinical event rates, e.g., emergency department and hospitalization rates; and to examine the impact of changes in inpatient care on mortality.
National Institutes of Health
Impact of Medicaid ACO funding for health-related social needs on dietary quality and health
Goals: To evaluate the impact of a new state Medicaid program to provide funding for food and housing services on the dietary quality, stress, health, and healthcare utilization of adult patients and to assess the implementation of the program in a large health care organization.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Medicaid Payment Policy and Access to Care for Dual Eligible Beneficiaries
Goals: To assess the impact of Medicaid payment increases for primary care providers on outpatient care, hospitalizations, and other adverse events, and medial spending, with a focus on vulnerable dual-eligible Medicare-Medicaid beneficiaries.
Role: Principal Investigator
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Federally Qualified Health Centers and Care for Vulnerable Populations
Goals: This project will assess the impact of expansions in federally qualified health centers (FQHC) on medical care use and quality, adverse clinical events, and spending among low-income populations
Role: Principal Investigator
AltaMed Health Services Corporation
Effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on racial/ethnic and disability-based healthcare disparities
Goals: To examine how the unintentional elimination of SNAP benefits for thousands of eligible beneficiaries impacts outcomes
National Institutes of Health
The Transition from Medicaid to Medicare and Impacts on Disparities in Coverage and Care
Goals: The goal of this study is to examine how state and federal policies that provide premium or cost-sharing subsidies to low-income Medicare beneficiaries impact chronic disease care, emergency department visits and hospitalizations, and health care spending.
Role: Principal Investigator
National Institutes of Health
Identifying Disparities in the Cascade of Care for Medicaid-Enrolled Youth with Opioid Use Disorder
Goals: The major goals of this project is to apply a novel analytic framework, the Cascade of Care, to the care of Medicaid-enrolled youth aged 13-25 with opioid use disorder, and identify racial and ethnic disparities at key stages.
Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute
Effectiveness of Interventions to Improve Resiliency & Burnout in Mental Health Residential Staff
Goals: To determine which evidence-based program should be implemented to increase staff resiliency and decrease staff burnout and related outcomes in residential care homes for adults with serious mental illness and developmental and intellectual disabilities: (1) Integrated Resiliency Training at the site-level involving staff within residential care homes, or (2) Workplace Improvement Learning Collaborative (WILC) at the organization-level involving managers of residential care homes across organizations.
Publications
Dr. Fung on PubMed
Education
BA, Yale University, Economics
PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Post-Doctoral Training, University of California, San Francisco