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Debra Saliba (she/her) is a physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, and a professor of medicine and the Anna & Harry Borun Endowed Chair in Geriatrics at UCLA. At the Los Angeles VA she is associate director for education in the HSR&D Center of Innovation. As a practicing geriatrician and health services researcher, Saliba's research focuses on creating tools and knowledge that improve quality of care and quality of life of older adults across care settings, including hospitals, home, post-acute care and nursing homes. She developed the VES-13, a survey that identifies vulnerable elders living in the community. Saliba was the principal investigator for CMS's MDS 3.0 Revision project and collaborative VA MDS Validation project. National tests showed significant gains in MDS reliability, validity, staff satisfaction, and efficiency. Saliba's recent research includes developing measures of provider performance in post-acute and long-term care; inclusion of patient and family priorities in weighting quality measures, and the relationship between nursing home quality and staffing structures. Saliba is executive editor for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and past president and board chair of the American Geriatrics Society. In addition to serving on the NASEM Committee on Nursing Quality, Saliba serves on several national expert panels, including the CMS 5-star TEP. Saliba received her M.D. from the University of Alabama where she also completed internal medicine residency. She completed fellowships in health services research and geriatric medicine at UCLA where she received an M.P.H. in epidemiology.
M.D., University of Alabama; M.P.H. in epidemiology, UCLA School of Public Health
