Leora Horwitz, MD

I am an associate professor in the Departments of Population Health and Medicine at NYU Langone. I am the founding director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science and the Division of Healthcare Delivery Science in the Department of Population Health.

After receiving my AB degree magna cum laude in social studies from Harvard University, I earned my medical degree from Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, where I also served as chief resident. I then received a master’s degree in health services research while a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale School of Medicine, and spent seven years on the faculty at Yale School of Medicine.

My research initially focused on systems and practices intended to bridge gaps or discontinuities in care. I have studied shift-to-shift transfers among physicians and among nurses, transfers from the emergency department to inpatient units, and the transition from the hospital to home. I now work more generally on healthcare redesign and learning health system transformation.

My work has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the John A. Hartford Foundation, the American Federation for Aging Research, the Patterson Family Trust, the Quad Family Foundation, and the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation.

Under contract to the CMS, I led the development of the 30-day all-cause hospital readmission quality measure and the excess days in acute care measures that are endorsed by the National Quality Forum and are now publicly reported.

At NYU Langone, I am the principal investigator of the NYU Patient Imaging Quality and Safety Laboratory (funded by the AHRQ), the Greater New York City Practice Transformation Network (funded by CMS), the Enhancing the Role of Hospitals in Improving Population Health Learning Center (funded by the RWJF), and the Rapid Randomized Controlled Trial Laboratory (funded by the Quad Family Foundation). Finally, I co-direct the Population Health Science Scholars Program.