Alisa B. Busch

Alisa B. Busch, MD, MS

Associate Professor of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital
Harvard Medical SchoolDepartment of Health Care Policy180 Longwood AvenueBoston, MA 02115-5899

Alisa B. Busch, MD, MS, is an associate professor of psychiatry at McLean Hospital and associate professor of health care policy at the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. She is chief of the Health Services Research Division for Partners Psychiatry and Mental Health and an attending psychiatrist in McLean’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Partial Hospital Program.

Dr. Busch’s main academic interests are in measuring and improving mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) treatment quality. Her research focuses on developing quality measures, informed by expert guidelines/consensus, and applying them to examine changes in MH/SUD treatment quality. Her research documents changes in treatment quality, among a variety of patient diagnostic populations, and in large systems of care. An additional focus of her research is how changes in MH/SUD healthcare policy, delivery, and financing affect mental health care quality, utilization, and spending. 

Consistent with her interest in treatment quality assessment and improvement, Dr. Busch is McLean Hospital’s chief medical information officer and director of clinical performance measurement and health services research. She directs the hospital’s electronic medical record and Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement (PROMs) program. McLean’s PROMs program informs individual patient care by providing immediate and longitudinal feedback about patient symptom severity and improvement during treatment, provides aggregate information to measure program outcomes over time, and facilitates clinical research. 

Dr. Busch is nationally recognized for her work on measuring MH/SUD treatment quality in systems of care. She has served on national technical expert panels on quality measurement in usual care MH/SUD treatment settings for the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). Most recently she has served on the CMS Technical Expert Panel for Inpatient Psychiatric Facilities (IPF) Measure Development and Maintenance Project for the development of new IPF quality measures for psychiatric facilities.

Dr. Busch is a graduate of New York University with honors in English literature and was a recipient of the University Scholar’s Program. She received her MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed her psychiatry residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science. She received her MS in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health. 

Use of Telemedicine and Quality of Care Among Medicare Enrollees With Serious Mental Illness
Authors: Wilcock AD, Huskamp HA, Busch AB, Normand ST, Uscher-Pines L, Raja PV, Zubizarreta JR, Barnett ML, Mehrotra A
JAMA Health Forum
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Strategies To Treat Opioid Use Disorder
Authors: Uscher-Pines L, Riedel LE, Mehrotra A, Rose S, Busch AB, Huskamp HA
Health Aff
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A cohort study examining changes in treatment patterns for alcohol use disorder among commercially insured adults in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Busch AB, Mehrotra A, Greenfield SF, Uscher-Pines L, Rose S, Huskamp HA
J Subst Abuse Treat
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Appropriateness of Telemedicine Versus In-Person Care: A Qualitative Exploration of Psychiatrists' Decision Making
Authors: Uscher-Pines L, Parks AM, Sousa J, Raja P, Mehrotra A, Huskamp HA, Busch AB
Psychiatr Serv
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Association Between Telemedicine Use in Nonmetropolitan Counties and Quality of Care Received by Medicare Beneficiaries With Serious Mental Illness
Authors: Wang B, Huskamp HA, Rose S, Busch AB, Uscher-Pines L, Raja P, Mehrotra A
JAMA Network Open
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Association Between Telepsychiatry Capability and Treatment of Patients With Mental Illness in the Emergency Department
Authors: Patel SY, Huskamp HA, Barnett ML, Zubizarreta JR, Zachrison KS, Busch AB, Wilcock AD, Mehrotra A
Psychiatr Serv
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Disruptions in Care for Medicare Beneficiaries With Severe Mental Illness During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Busch AB, Huskamp HA, Raja P, Rose S, Mehrotra A.
JAMA Netw Open
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Association of Characteristics of Psychiatrists With Use of Telemental Health Visits in the Medicare Population.
Authors: Choi S, Wilcock AD, Busch AB, Huskamp HA, Uscher-Pines L, Shi Z, Mehrotra A.
JAMA Psychiatric
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How Is Telemedicine Being Used In Opioid And Other Substance Use Disorder Treatment?
Authors: Haiden A. Huskamp, Alisa B. Busch, Jeffrey Souza, Lori Uscher-Pines, Sherri Rose, Andrew Wilcock, Bruce E. Landon, and Ateev Mehrotra
Health Affairs
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Participation in Accountable Care Organizations Among Hospitals Offering Substance Use Disorder and Mental Health Services.
Authors: McDowell MJ, Busch AB, Sen AP, Stuart EA, Riedel L, Barry CL, Huskamp HA.
Psychiatric Services
View full abstract on Pubmed