About

Gregory L. Alexander, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI, FIAHSI, is the Centennial Professor of Health Policy at Columbia School of Nursing. He is an internationally recognized nursing informaticist and clinical expert with over 30 years of research and clinical practice leadership. His research program focuses on technologies used to support patient care delivery, with a particular emphasis on the care of older adults in the community. He has led federally funded studies that benchmark national trends in information technology adoption and its impact on quality measures in nursing homes, accumulating nearly a decade of trend data on digital maturity in long-term post-acute care settings. His current work, funded by the National Institute of Aging, explores how digital maturity and nurse practitioner care environments in nursing homes influence the quality of care for residents with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias. Alexander has contributed to policy and standards through his involvement with the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and has worked internationally as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Australia. He authored a book on clinical health information technology in long-term and post-acute care settings, promoting evidence-based models of care and technology implementation to enhance safety and quality.

Research topics

• Nursing
• Medicine
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Business
• Marketing
• Knowledge management
• Engineering

Selected publications

• An evaluation of telehealth expansion in U.S. nursing homes

  Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association · 2020 · 44 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Nursing
  • Medicine

  OBJECTIVE: This research brief contains results from a national survey about telehealth use reported in a random sample of U.S. nursing homes. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The sample includes nursing homes (N = 664) that completed surveys about information technology maturity, including telehealth use, beginning January 1, 2019, and ending August 4, 2020. A pre/post design was employed to examine differences in nursing home telehealth use for nursing homes completing surveys prior to and after telehealth expansion, on March 6, 2020. We calculated a cumulative telehealth score using survey data from 6 questions about extent of nursing home telehealth use (score range 0-42). We calculated proportions of nursing homes using telehealth and used logistic regression to look for differences in nursing homes based on organizational characteristics and odds ratios. RESULTS: Significant relationships were found between nursing home characteristics and telehealth use, and specifically, larger metropolitan homes reported greater telehealth use. Ownership had little effect on telehealth use. Nursing homes postexpansion used telehealth applications for resident evaluation 11.24 times more (P < .01) than did nursing homes pre-expansion. DISCUSSION: Administrators completing our survey reported a wide range of telehealth use, including approximately 16% having no telehealth use and 5% having the maximum amount of telehealth use. Mean telehealth use scores reported by the majority of these nursing homes is on the lower end of the range. CONCLUSIONS: One solution for the current pandemic is to encourage the proliferation of telehealth with continued relaxed regulations, which can reduce isolation and preserve limited resources (eg, personal protective equipment) while maintaining proper distancing parameters.

  DOI

• Advancing health information technology roadmaps in long term care

  International Journal of Medical Informatics · 2020 · 23 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Business
  DOI

• Results of the Missouri Quality Initiative in Sustaining Changes in Nursing Home Care: Six-Year Trends of Reducing Hospitalizations of Nursing Home Residents

  The journal of nutrition health & aging · 2020 · 39 citations

  • Nursing
  • Medicine
  • Business
  DOI

Recent grants

• A National Report of Nursing Home Quality Measures and Information Technology

  NIH · $2.7M · 2013–2023

• NIH Grant K08HS016862

  NIH · $519k · 2013

Frequent coauthors

• Marilyn Rantz

  NDT Consultants (United Kingdom)

  178 shared

• Amy Vogelsmeier

  University of Missouri

  134 shared

• Colleen Galambos

  University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

  125 shared

• Charles Crecelius

  Washington University in St. Louis

  111 shared

• Kelli E. Canada

  University of Missouri

  102 shared

• Steven J. Miller

  101 shared

• Shari Kist

  Novem (Netherlands)

  84 shared

• Alan C. Geller

  Harvard University

  81 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Nursing

  Columbia University

  2000

• M.S., Nursing

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1993

• B.S., Nursing

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1989

Awards & honors

• 2023 APEX Award for Publication Excellence in Editorial and…
• 2023 Midwest Nursing Research Society Distinguished Contribu…
• 2022 American Medical Informatics Association Harriet Werley…
• 2021 International Researcher Hall of Fame - Sigma Theta Tau…
• 2021 Certificate of Recognition for Commercial Success for l…

Similar researchers at Columbia University

• Eric R. Kandelh-248
• René Henh-177
• Peter D Kwongh-176
• Lawrence Elliot Friedh-171
• Tom Maniatish-162