Trained in statistics and applied mathematics, Dr. Intrator is an Professor of Health Services Research and Policy at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY and Adjunct Professor at the Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, RI. Dr. Intrator also works as Research Health Scientist and the Director of the national VA Geriatrics & Extended Care Data Analysis Center (GECDAC).
Dr. Intrator has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in leading health services and health policy journals such as Health Affairs, Medical Care Research and Review, Medical care, Health Services Research, and has been cited more than 2500 times. Her excellent work has brought her multiple awards, including Best of AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (2015), Outstanding Medical Care Reviewer (2008–2011), Outstanding Abstract of the Annual Meeting of the Health Services Research (2004) and others. Her outstanding contribution to the health services research community is exemplified by her authoritative reviews including one published by HSR as an example to authors (2005). Dr. Intrator's work has been funded by grants from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, National Institute on Aging (NIA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Israeli National Science Foundation, and the Israel National Institute for Health Care Policy and Research.
Dr. Intrator has been studying the effect of nursing homes' organizational characteristics (Intrator 2005, Intrator 2014), markets and states' Medicaid policies on hospitalizations from nursing homes (Intrator 2004, Intrator 2007 ). She and colleagues developed the Residential History File that summarizes information from Medicare claims and nursing home (NH) Minimum Data Set (MDS) assessments to provide a daily tracking of individuals through their health care locations, including non-Medicare-paid NH stays. More recently, she evaluated the impact of state policies on nurse practitioner and physician assistant scope of practice on their availability and visits in nursing homes. Another paper examined the impact of state spending on home and community based services on nursing home admissions.
Dr. Intrator's VA research focuses on Veteran's use of nursing homes and health care programs in the community across health care systems (VA, Medicare and Medicaid) and the quality of care delivered, with particular attention to the implications for health policies and organizational management. Dr. Intrator is currently examining the system-wide impact of provision of personal care services, GeriPACT and Home Based Primary Care. Since 2012, Dr. Intrator has been developing GECDAC as a data and analytic resource to the VA Center Office of Geriatrics & Extended Care (GEC), developing measures and standardized datasets, conducting evaluations, as well as enriching the community of researchers by providing access to many of these resources. In developing the GECDAC data infrastructure, Dr. Intrator extended the Residential History File (RHF) methodology to include input from VA provided or paid utilization in addition to Medicare and Medicaid claims and nursing home resident assessments. The RHF provides a daily tracking of individuals through their health care locations allowing for example, the identification of site of death and adjudicating overlapping services data. The RHF has been used in many studies.