Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Andrew Chou

Shih-Chuan (Andrew) Chou, MD, MPH, SM, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at UC San Francisco and an affiliate member of the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS), is the IHPS' Faculty Spotlight Conversation of the month! He practices as an attending physician at the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights Emergency Department, where he provides emergency care to a diverse patient population.

Dr. Chou’s research focuses on the impact of health insurance design on emergency care utilization, patient outcomes, and healthcare costs, with a focus on high deductible health plans (HDHPs), specifically. His work specifically examines how financial barriers influence clinical decision-making in acute care settings, with a special emphasis on patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and other cardiac conditions. 

Dr. Chou is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), to explore how HDHPs affect the evaluation, treatment, and outcomes of emergency department patients, including hospital admissions, advanced testing, and major cardiac events. In addition to his work on healthcare access and insurance, Dr. Chou is interested in how cost-sharing impacts patient-clinician decision-making in emergency care. His research aims to inform healthcare policy that improves the value of care while reducing the financial burden on patients.

"I think that there is a lot of policy chatter and a broader sense that [emergency department] visits are avoidable and expensive and unnecessary if you do all the things right, but that's very contrasting to when I see patients. What I see are patients who either they are scared, they're worried something serious is happening to them, or they don't really have another place to get care in a timely fashion," Dr. Chou tells IHPS.

Watch the interview below.