Aug 11, 2020
2020: Year of the Nurse an Interview with Ellen Kurtzman
“When you're ready for something, life opens the door for you.” — Melissa Batchelor, PhD, RN, FNP, FAAN (09:29-09:35)
Ellen T. Kurtzman, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, is a health services researcher and a tenured associate professor of nursing with secondary appointments in the university’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration. In this week’s episode, let’s get to know her more.
Part One of ‘2020: Year of the Nurse an Interview with Ellen Kurtzman’
Dr. Kurtzman teaches health policy, research, and statistics. Her investigator-initiated research explores the impact of federal, state, and institutional policies on health care quality and the role of the healthcare workforce in achieving higher-value care.
From 2014-2016, Dr. Kurtzman served as the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)/Academy Health Policy Fellow, which placed her “in residence” at NCHS to collaborate with federal researchers and access NCHS restricted data assets. From 2011 to 2012, was an affiliate scholar at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. Serving as both a collaborator from 2007-2010 and Visiting Nurse Scholar from 2010-2011 with the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health at The University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kurtzman advanced and built policy support for a model of care for chronically ill elderly, referred to as the Transitional Care Model.
“Many times, in my career, I've done projects that people have told me not to do, but I felt like they were important. And they've turned out to be the projects that had the biggest impact.” — Melissa Batchelor, PhD, RN, FNP, FAAN (33:08-33:20)
Before joining academia, Dr. Kurtzman served in senior capacities for organizations such as the American Red Cross, National Quality Forum (NQF), American Health Care Association, National PACE Association, and the Partnership for Behavioral Healthcare. While at NQF, she was the architect of national consensus standards for measuring nursing’s contribution to quality. She also led NQF’s national efforts to establish a hospital and home health care quality and performance standards.
Dr. Kurtzman received her PhD in public policy and Administration from GW’s Trachtenberg School, her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her BSN from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009, Dr. Kurtzman was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
Part Two of ‘2020: Year of the Nurse an Interview with Ellen Kurtzman’
She went from being a bedside nurse to getting a degree in public health and then having the public policy. But her research program has always been on how the policy environment influences the care and delivery of health care in this country.
Her most recent work explores team-based care's role in the quality of office-based physician practices and the prevalence of opioid prescribing in ambulatory care settings. She has led studies examining the quality of care and the services delivered by nurse practitioners and physician assistants, the impact of occupational restrictions on clinician practice, the effect of Medicaid expansion on community health centers, and the influence of performance-based payment programs on practitioner behavior.
“If you're a health care professional, you have to do the standard gold stuff to establish your expertise.” — Melissa Batchelor, PhD, RN, FNP, FAAN (30:46-30:56)
Throughout her career, Dr. Kurtzman has pursued unique extramural collaborations to advance her scholarship. From 2018-2019, she was one of only eight mid-career professionals selected to participate in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Fellows program. During her year on Capitol Hill and in the Administration, she worked in the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, The Honorable Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and the Office of the Surgeon General, Jerome M. Adams, MD, MPH.
How to Connect More with Ellen Kurtzman
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EllenKurtzman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellentkurtzman/
About Melissa
I earned my Bachelor of Science in Nursing (‘96) and Master of Science in Nursing (‘00) as a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) School of Nursing (SON). I truly enjoy working with the complex medical needs of older adults. I worked full-time for five years as FNP in geriatric primary care across many long-term care settings (skilled nursing homes, assisted living, home and office visits) then transitioned into academic nursing in 2005, joining the faculty at UNCW SON as a lecturer. I obtained my PhD in Nursing and a post-Master’s Certificate in Nursing Education from the Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing (’11) and then joined the faculty at Duke University School of Nursing as an Assistant Professor. My family moved to northern Virginia in 2015 and led to me joining the faculty at George Washington University (GW) School of Nursing in 2018 as a (tenured) Associate Professor where I am also the Director of the GW Center for Aging, Health and Humanities. Find out more about her work at https://melissabphd.com/.