Dr. Silber helped establish the Center for Outcomes Research and has served as its director since its inception in 1997. An internationally known authority on outcomes measurement and severity adjustment for both adult and pediatric application, he created the adult quality of care measure Failure-to-Rescue in 1992 that has been adopted as three specific quality measures by the National Quality Forum.

In addition, Dr. Silber developed the Prolonged Length of Stay and Conditional Length of Stay outcome measures, both of which are now applied to pediatric and adult populations. He also helped develop the Omega measure that evaluates outcome measures by estimating the relative contribution of patient to hospital characteristics associated with a specific outcome.

Much of Dr. Silber’s recent work focuses on the use of multivariate matching when comparing outcomes, specifically with respect to problems in both pediatric and adult medicine and surgery, disparities, and cancer.

His current research interests include the development of new health care outcome measures, statistical methodology in outcomes research including multivariate matching, clinical economics, measuring health care quality, health care disparities, medical decision making and outcomes of care in cancer.

AB, Washington University (Economics), 1976

MD, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 1980

PhD, University of Pennsylvania (Health Care Systems), 1990

Director, Center for Outcomes Research

Nancy Abramson Wolfson Endowed Chair in Health Services Research

Professor of Pediatrics

Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care

Society for Clinical Trials, 1987-

American Economics Association, 1987-

Academy for Health Services and Research Policy, 1987-

American Society of Clinical Oncology, 1987-

Society for Medical Decision Making, 1987-

Society for Pediatric Research, 1987-

John Morgan Society, 2014-2016

College of Physicians, 2015-

Ethel Brown Foerderer Fund for Excellence Award, 1997

Samuel P. Martin Health Services Research Award, 2000

Hummeler Research Prize, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, 2003