Timothy Huerta, PhD, MS

Professor of Family Medicine

Huerta_Timothy_720x720College of Medicine and Wexner Medical Center | CRIO & Associate Dean for Research Information Technology
The Center for clinical and Transitional Science (CCTS) |  Director of Biomedical Informatics
The Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics and Systems Thinking (CATALYST) | Core Member                    Department of Family and Community Medicine and Department of Biomedical Informatics | Professor

Research Information Technology and Center for Biostatistics
530 West Spring Street
Suite 275
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Phone: 614-333-6636
Timothy.Huerta@osumc.edu

Dr. Huerta is a Professor of family medicine in Ohio State's College of Medicine and brings both breadth and depth of experience in quantitative methods, health services research and multidisciplinary collaboration. Dr. Huerta is a well-published, nationally recognized expert on the use of survey data to advance discovery and has been published in a diverse set of journals. Dr. Huerta also has a long history of engaging clinical practitioners in translating the value of research to practice, and he has been recognized nationally for his work in both mentorship and teaching.

Prior to joining the faculty at Ohio State, Dr. Huerta was the director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation, Education and Research at Texas Tech University, where he developed the infrastructure currently in use throughout the province of British Columbia for the online delivery of continuing medical education in the area of community oncology. Finally, Dr. Huerta has a long history outside of academia developing tools and technologies that support both research and practice.

Research, Education and Clinical Interests

Dr. Huerta is a nationally recognized expert on issues related to hospital productivity and process with extensive expertise in the area of outcomes as it relates to electronic health records (EHRs), health information technology (HIT) and meaningful use. In particular, his interest in non-parametric approaches to the assessment of outcomes vis-à-vis frontier methodologies has been useful in gaining a greater understanding of how the explosion of investment in HIT has impacted both research and practice. He has conducted a number of studies looking specifically at adoption of EHR technology and the differences that exist based by medical focus. 

Recently, Dr. Huerta has taken his knowledge and experience with large dataset analysis to address impactful areas of research. In this context, he has also worked to engage junior researchers to help them develop their research agendas and this has diversified the focus of his work beyond efficiency, including some of the first work on the use of social media by hospitals through the development of objective metrics and automated assessment and evaluation tools. Dr. Huerta has spent a great deal of time focused on the experience that people have when seeking service – including in the domain of social media. He co-developed automated tools to create objective assessment of the usability experience of individuals seeking information online. Further, he has worked with that data across a number of domains, including patient satisfaction, patient safety and facility efficiency.

Education and Training

PhD: Public administration, University of Southern California
Area concentrations: public management, organization theory and behavior

MS: Public administration, California State University, Los Angeles 
Research emphasis: Public policy and organization theory

BA: Chemistry, California State University, Los Angeles
Research emphasis: biochemistry and biophysics

Faculty fellow: Public health cyber infrastructure, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

Post-doctoral research fellow: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine 
School of Population and Public Health, Department of Health Care and Epidemiology

Editorial Activities

Editorial boards

  • Associate editor, Education in the Health Professions
  • Associate editor, Journal of Healthcare Management

National Positions

National organizations
  • Academy of Management, chair, membership committee, Healthcare Management Division 
  • North American Primary Care Research Group
  • Family Practice Oncology Network 
  • American Medical Informatics Association 
  • National Council on Administrative Fellowship’s Benchmarks and Metrics subcommittee 
  • American College of Healthcare Executives 
  • Academy Health 
  • Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 
  • American Society of Quality 
  • National Association of Parliamentarians 
Review panels
  • Standing reviewer, Agency for Health Research and Quality 

Awards and Honors

  • Myron Fottler Outstanding Service Award, Academy of Management, Health Care Management Division, 2015
  • Excellence in Teaching Award, Academy of Management, Health Care Management Division, 2014

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