Debra Saliba

About

Dr. Debra Saliba holds the Anna and Harry Borun Chair in Geriatrics and Gerontology at UCLA. Her research focuses on various aspects of geriatrics, including nursing home quality, staffing, health outcomes, and disparities in care for older adults. She has contributed extensively to understanding transfer rates, self-efficacy among family caregivers in dementia care, and the impact of Medicare payment reforms on patient complexity and hospital admissions. Her work also addresses issues related to end-of-life care, racial and ethnic disparities, and the use of telehealth in older populations. Dr. Saliba's research aims to improve health and function for older adults through evidence-based practices and policy analysis.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Database
• Family medicine
• Gerontology
• Law
• Economic growth
• Psychiatry
• Business
• Actuarial science

Selected publications

• Rationing Limited Healthcare Resources in the COVID‐19 Era and Beyond: Ethical Considerations Regarding Older Adults

  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2020 · 244 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to impact older adults disproportionately with respect to serious consequences ranging from severe illness and hospitalization to increased mortality risk. Concurrently, concerns about potential shortages of healthcare professionals and health supplies to address these issues have focused attention on how these resources are ultimately allocated and used. Some strategies, for example, misguidedly use age as an arbitrary criterion that disfavors older…

  DOI

• Nursing Home Guide to Adjusting Nurse Staffing for Resident Case‐Mix

  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025-05-02 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Nursing homes (NHs) are required to provide sufficient nursing staff to meet the needs of their residents. This study provides a guide for NHs to align nurse staffing levels with resident needs and calculates the gap between reported and expected NH staffing. METHODS: Using the best available research data and recent federal minimum staffing requirements, expected nurse staffing levels were estimated for the 25 resident case-mix index (CMI) groups established by the Centers for Medic…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Post-Acute Care Admissions Among Medicare Beneficiaries With Disabilities During Payment Reform and the COVID-19 Pandemic

  The Gerontologist · 2024-12-16 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Recent Medicare payment reforms aimed to improve post-acute access to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) and home health agencies (HHAs) for patients with complex care needs, including beneficiaries with disabilities. Soon after reforms were implemented, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic began, which disproportionately affected older adults and people with disabilities. Leveraging Medicare administrative data to identify 2 distinct cohorts of beneficiaries wit…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Incorporating staffing instability in the nursing home Five-Star Staffing Composite

  Health Affairs Scholar · 2024-12-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Staffing is an important indicator of nursing home quality and resident health outcomes. The Five-Star staffing ratings in Nursing Home Care Compare, the report card published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is based on average hours per resident-day and turnover measures. Studies have shown that a new measure of staffing instability, capturing day-to-day staffing variation, is associated with resident outcomes and provides additional information about quality not reflected in…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Medicare Part D: Major Shifts With the Inflation Reduction Act and a Way Forward

  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025-01-07 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 introduced major changes in the Part D benefit that aim to improve medication access and correct several of the financial misalignments in the current Part D benefit. The changes address financial obligations of Medicare beneficiaries, the federal government, Part D plan sponsors (i.e., insurance companies), and drug manufacturers. The changes include new brand and biologic manufacturer obligations to beneficiaries eligible for the low-income subsidy. Ef…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David A. Ganz

  147 shared

• Joel E. Streim

  146 shared

• Joseph G. Ouslander

  Florida Atlantic University

  114 shared

• John F. Schnelle

  114 shared

• Neil S. Wenger

  97 shared

• Maria Orlando Edelen

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  91 shared

• Laurence Z. Rubenstein

  86 shared

• Shinya Ishii

  70 shared

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