Matthew Zahn, a graduate student in the Department, was awarded a $20,000 pilot grant from the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative to study the impacts of hospital consolidation on patient safety. The project will use MedPAR data on inpatient hospital stays for Medicare enrollees to measure changes in Patient Safety Indicators—standard measures of adverse patient safety events developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality—at merging hospitals. The results of this analysis would have implications regarding the effect of hospital consolidation on access to quality care. The grant application was led by Matthew and Zenon Zabinski PhD and the research team includes Carey Business School Professor Michael Darden who serves as the Principal Investigator.