Meltzer’s research explores problems in health economics and public policy with a focus on the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis and the cost and quality of hospital care. Meltzer has performed randomized trials comparing the use of doctors who specialize in inpatient care (“hospitalists”). He is currently leading a Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Innovation Challenge award to study the effects of improved continuity in the doctor patient relationship between the inpatient and outpatient setting on the costs and outcomes of care for frequently hospitalized Medicare patients. He led the formation of the Chicago Learning Effectiveness Advancement Research Network (Chicago LEARN) that helped pioneer collaboration of Chicago-Area academic medical centers in hospital-based comparative effectiveness research and the recent support of the Chicago Area Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN) by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
Meltzer received his MD and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Meltzer is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lee Lusted Prize of the Society for Medical Decision Making, the Health Care Research Award of the National Institute for Health Care Management, and the Eugene Garfield Award from Research America. Meltzer is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and past president of the Society for Medical Decision Making. He has served on several IOM panels, include one examining U.S. organ allocation policy and the recent panel on the Learning Health Care System that produced Best Care at Lower Cost. He also has served on the DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020, the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Methodology Committee, as a Council Member of the National Institute for General Medical Studies, and as a health economics advisor for the Congressional Budget Office.