Charleen Hsuan, JD, PhD, is a faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration at the Pennsylvania State University and affiliate law faculty at Penn State Law. She serves as the lead of the regulatory impact core of the Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). She is also an affiliate of the Penn State Center for Health Care and Policy Research and the Penn State Population Research Institute.
Hsuan’s research focuses on how policies and laws influence access to care and disparities in care. These policies and laws include the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, state licensing laws involving hospital transfers, paid sick leave laws, policies about local health department services, and state laws and policies about opioid use by pregnant women. In addition, her research has also examined policy issues including emergency department crowding and ambulatory care sensitive conditions, both of which particularly affect safety net hospitals. She has extensive research working with hospital discharge data.
Hsuan has served on a CMS-funded National Quality Forum committee on Attribution for Critical Illness and Injury. This committee was tasked with describing how payment incentives can support systems-based thinking for patients with high-acuity illness and injuries resulting from large-scale emergency events. Prior to her earning her PhD, Hsuan practiced law as an associate at Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to earning her JD, Hsuan was a summer intern in the Appeals and Opinions division of the State of New York Office of the Attorney General, a research assistant at the Harvard School of Public Health, and an associate consultant at Health Benchmarks, Inc.
Hsuan received her BS in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from Yale University, her JD from Columbia Law School, and her PhD in health policy and management from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
