Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

Profile

Dr. Kutney-Lee's scholarship is focused on the effects of nursing care organization on patient outcomes and how systems can be redesigned to work more efficiently to provide equitable and high-quality patient care, particularly for vulnerable populations. Additionally, her research examines the adoption and use of electronic health records, and how they are correlated to patient and provider outcomes.

Along with colleagues at CHERP and the Veteran Experience Center, at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, she examines structures and care processes that are associated with quality outcomes for Veterans with serious, life-limiting illness and those at the end-of-life. One of these studies, published in Medical Care, documented that bereaved family members of black and Hispanic Veterans surveyed by VA rate the quality of end-of-life care in VA Medical Centers significantly lower than whites. She currently is the Principal Investigator of a HSR&D-funded MERIT award (Investigating Multi-Level Determinants of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Quality of End-of-Life Care for Veterans) that is examining how specific care provided, such as complex transitions and intensive medical interventions, and broader organizational factors related to nursing care may contribute to racial/ethnic differences in bereaved families' perceptions of end-of-life care quality for Veterans.