Jennifer S. Riggs, Ph.D., RN

Jennifer S. Riggs, Ph.D., brings her extensive research, policy, and nursing experience to improve care for all patients, especially older adults. Her clinical area of expertise is Medicare-certified home health and home and community-based care for diverse adults and older adults with multiple co-occurring chronic conditions and complex care coordination needs.

Dr. Riggs has expertise in mixed-methods research, including project design and leading teams in implementation of national multi-site primary clinical assessment and patient-reported outcome measures data collection, clinical record review and extraction, surveys, and qualitative data collection (including structured interviews and focus groups). Her research experience includes protocol and Data Security Plan (DSP) development, submitting protocols for Institutional Review Board (IRB) review at Abt and multiple external academic and providers; study site engagement, outreach, and recruitment; and quantitative and qualitative data analysis and reporting, including development of manuscripts for submission to peer-reviewed journals.

At Abt, Dr. Riggs has served as the lead for home health and hospice instrument development, leading large teams to develop data elements that can meaningfully assess and improve quality of care for high-risk, high-volume, and challenge-prone areas of home health care and hospice. She also provides oversight of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ OASIS help desk, the resource for home health agencies to answer OASIS assessment and quality measure questions. Additionally, she is a subject matter expert on national post-acute care training for standardized patient assessments.

Prior to her work at Abt, Dr. Riggs conducted home health and end-of-life care research, and fostered the next generation of community and home health clinicians as an assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing and West Virginia University School of Nursing.

Expertise:

• All aspects of research design, implementation, analysis, and reporting
• Home and community-based care of adults and older adults; Management, quality, and safety
• Nursing care across the lifespan and across settings

Key Projects:

• Home Health and Hospice Quality Measures and Assessment Instruments Development and Quality Reporting Programs Support, CMS
• Home Health Quality Measures and Instrument Development, CMS
• Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Supportive Services Demonstration IWISH, HUD
• Bundled Payment for Care Initiative (BPCI), CMS

Publications:

• Riggs, J.S., Roczen, M., Levitt, A., McMullen, T., Proctor, J., & Nuccio, E. (2021). PROMIS Global Health: Feasibility in home health. Quality of Life Research, published online 24 April 2021. doi:  10.1007/s11136-021-02845-x.
• Galantowicz S, Riggs JS, Gonzaga Z, Levitt A, Proctor J, Starr R, Nuccio E. “The Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) Field Test: Methods, Design and Participants.” Poster presented at Academy Health 2018 Annual Research Meeting, June 24 - 26, 2018, Seattle, WA.
• Nuccio E, Riggs JS, Gonzaga Z, Levitt A, McMullen T, Proctor J, Hittle D, Gillis J. “Reliability and Validity of Current and Potential Future Standardized OASIS Items.” Poster presented at Academy Health 2018 Annual Research Meeting, June 24 - 26, 2018, Seattle, WA.
• Roczen M, Nuccio E, McMullen T, Levitt A, Proctor J, Gillis J, Gonzaga Z, Riggs JS, Galantowicz S. “PROMIS - OASIS Comparison: First Steps for CMS Post-Acute Care Data Collection with Patient Reported Outcomes.” Poster presented at Academy Health 2018 Annual Research Meeting, June 24 - 26, 2018, Seattle, WA.
• Riggs, J.S., Madigan, E.A., Gonzaga, Z., Gillis, J. Starr, R., Roczen, M., & Nuccio, E. (September 27, 2017). “Feasibility of home health care patients’ self-administration of the PROMIS Global Health Survey.” Podium presentation at HealthMeasures User Conference, Northwestern University, September 27-28, 2017, Chicago, IL.