Associate Program Director
VA GLAHS GRECC Physician, VA GLAHS HSR&D Center of Innovation Associate Director for Education, Director, UCLA/JH Borun Center for Gerontological Research, Senior Natural Scientist, RAND Health
Debra Saliba, MD, MPH, AGSF
Dr. Saliba is Associate Director for Education in the Los Angeles VA HSR&D Center of Innovation where she directs the VA National Clinician Scholars Program and the VA Advanced Fellowship in HSR. Dr. Saliba also holds the UCLA Anna & Harry Borun Endowed Chair in Geriatrics and Gerontology and is a senior natural scientist at RAND. Dr. Saliba currently serves as co-chair of the Geriatrics and Extended Care Council for the VA National Work Group to modernize VA’s electronic health record. Dr. Saliba’s research has created tools and knowledge that can be applied to improving quality of care and quality of life for vulnerable older adults and adults with long-term care needs across the care continuum. Her research uses mixed methods to address a range of clinical, quality and public health topics including inappropriate re-hospitalizations from nursing homes (NHs), evaluation of NH disaster response and resident safety, quality of care metrics for vulnerable adults and the development of models to predict functional decline and death, including development of the VES-13. Dr. Saliba led the national revision of the Minimum Data Set for Nursing Homes (MDS 3.0) for CMS and VA HSR&D. To accomplish this work, she led a consortium of NH researchers to conduct a large national test and evaluation study. Her research has been funded by VA HSR&D, AHRQ, NIH, CMS, ASPE, California DHHS and several foundations. Her current research includes comparing consumer quality ratings to 5-star NH ratings, a RCT to decrease CLC transfers to VA hospitals, an evaluation of CMS’ balancing incentives program to move Medicaid payments from institutions to community settings and a newly funded NIA project to explore the relationship between different staffing models and NH performance. Her research has received awards from VA HSR&D, the American Geriatrics Society, and Journal of American Medical Directors Association. In addition to her recent selection to the National Academy of Science Committee on Nursing Home Quality, Dr. Saliba serves on the CMS Nursing Home 5-Star Technical Advisory Panel, the National Quality Forum (NQF) Committee on Person and Family Centered Care and the NQF committee on Post-acute and Long-term care. She is a past President and Board Chair of the American Geriatrics Society and currently serves as Deputy Editor of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.