CORE Talks
CORE Talks assess the challenges the current emergency care system faces, the value delivered by emergency care, and the opportunities that new care models and changing technology bring.
The series highlights work grounded in rigorous empirical and theoretical research but that has clear relevance to policy.
Scroll down to see currently scheduled talks, and sign up to receive notification of future talks.
*Please check your SPAM folder after you register for a talk if you do not receive the Zoom link.
*Please note that talks posted more than 2-3 months in advance are subject to change based on a speaker’s clinical schedule.
Upcoming CORE Talks
Dr. Laura Burke
The Medicare Urgent Care Boom: Trends, Drivers, and Impacts
Urgent Care centers have been promoted as a cost-effective alternative to emergency departments, but little is known about their use among older adults, especially those with complex medical and social needs. Using national Medicare data, this study examines trends in urgent care utilization, the influence of patient and community characteristics, and shifts in clinician types serving older adults from 2012 to 2019.
Laura G. Burke, MD, MPH is the current Vice Chair of Research with Brown University Emergency Medicine. Prior to this role, she was an associate professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and an emergency medicine attending at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her MD from the University of Massachusetts in 2007. After completing her emergency medicine residency at BIDMC in 2010, she went on to get her MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health while completing a Zuckerman Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership. In addition to her clinical practice as an emergency physician, Dr. Burke works as a health services researcher within the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and has worked on a number of projects on the measurement of and variation in quality of emergency and acute care.
October 15, 2025 at 1-2pm EST - Register Here
*Please note: If you don’t receive the Zoom link soon after registration, the link may have gone to junk/spam. Please report “not junk” while we rectify this issue to receive these in your inbox.
Dr. Judd Hollander
Placing the patient first by improving access to care: Innovations in unscheduled telemedicine
Description forthcoming.
Judd E. Hollander, MD, is Senior Vice President of Healthcare Delivery Innovation at Jefferson Health and Professor of Emergency Medicine at Sidney Kimmel Medical College (SKMC) at Thomas Jefferson University. Responsibilities include the enterprise-wide JeffConnect Telemedicine Program, Jefferson Urgent Care and other innovative programs taking care to patients. He graduated from New York University Medical School in 1986, completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Barnes Hospital in 1989, and an Emergency Medicine Residency at Jacobi Hospital in 1992. Dr. Hollander has published over 600 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and editorials on these and other topics. Dr. Hollander was President of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM), chaired the SAEM Program Committee and Emergency Medicine Foundation Scientific Review Committee and was Deputy Editor for the Annals of Emergency Medicine. He co-chaired the National Quality Forum (NQF) committee to create a framework to support measure development for telehealth, and currently serves as co-chair of the Research SIG for the American Telehealth Association (ATA). Dr. Hollander was the awarded the ACEP Award for Outstanding Research in 2001, the Hal Jayne SAEM Academic Excellence Award in 2003 and the SAEM Leadership Award in 2011.
November 20, 2025, 12-1pm EST- Register Here
*Please note: If you don’t receive the Zoom link soon after registration, the link may have gone to junk/spam. Please report “not junk” while we rectify this issue to receive these in your inbox.
Dr. Michelle Lin
The End of the Visit, or Just the Beginning? Reimagining ED Admit / Discharge (Disposition) Decisions
Description forthcoming.
Dr. Michelle Lin is an emergency physician-scientist working to make emergency care more patient-centered, accessible, and equitable. Her active NIH-funded research projects use mixed methods and Medicare and Medicaid data to improve the implementation of acute care delivery innovations; develop new quality measures based on what matters most to patients; and improve post-ED discharge care for high risk patients. Her prior funded work has examined value-based care in emergency medicine; drivers of hospitalization during ED visits; and physician workforce retention.
Dr. Lin leads the development of quality measures used nationally by emergency physicians in federally mandated payment programs through her leadership roles in the American College of Emergency Physicians and Clinical Emergency Data Registry. She was previously a fellow and external consultant to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation on projects evaluating access to care within advanced alternative payment models.
Dr. Lin has received several national awards for her work, including including the 2024 American College of Emergency Physicians Policy Pioneer Award and 2021 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Early Career Investigator Award. She completed residency at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City and fellowship in Health Policy Research at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she also completed a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Monday, December 8th at 1 pm EST - Register here
*Please note: If you don’t receive the Zoom link soon after registration, the link may have gone to junk/spam. Please report “not junk” while we rectify this issue to receive these in your inbox.
Dr. Ben Ukert
Title, description and biography forthcoming
Wednesday, February 18th at 1pm EST - Register here
*Please note: If you don’t receive the Zoom link soon after registration, the link may have gone to junk/spam. Please report “not junk” while we rectify this issue to receive these in your inbox.
Past CORE Talks
Dr. Jesse Pines
How AI May Transform Emergency Care
This talk will explore the emerging ways artificial intelligence is and could reshape emergency care, from streamlining triage to chart documentation to diagnostic and treatment decision-making. It will highlight both near-term applications, such as AI-driven ambient charting to real-time clinical decision support to chart review, and longer-term possibilities. The presentation will also address the ethical, operational, and safety considerations needed to integrate AI tools effectively into high-stakes emergency settings.
Jesse M. Pines MD, MBA, MSCE is the Chief of Clinical Innovation at US Acute Care Solutions. In this role, Dr. Pines leads efforts in artificial intelligence, alternative payment models, telemedicine, research, and other innovative programs. He serves as Director of the USACS Fellowship in Clinical Innovation. Dr. Pines has received multiple awards for his work including the 2023 Colin Rorie Jr. Award in Health Policy by the American College of Emergency Physicians for his work developing the first ever government-based alternative payment model in the field of emergency medicine.
September 2, 2025 11:00 AM EST - View recording
Dr. Lindsay Allen
Virtual Urgent Care: Data and New Models
Virtual urgent care (VUC) is a leading sector of the $12.2 billion U.S. virtual healthcare market, often improving access by reducing geographic barriers, lowering costs, and expanding availability. However, treating all VUC models as equivalent in research, practice, and policy is misleading and potentially harmful. VUC models vary significantly across healthcare systems, influencing care delivery, cost, and patient access. Overlooking these differences risks exacerbating healthcare disparities. This talk will describe several different VUC models across three health systems to highlight how different models uniquely impact healthcare equity.
Dr. Lindsay D Allen is a health economist and policy researcher at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. She evaluates state policies' effects on healthcare access, quality, and outcomes, focusing on marginalized populations. Her work, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, has been published in JAMA, JAMA Health Forum, JAMA Network Open, Health Affairs, Health Services Research, and other peer-reviewed outlets.
March 26, 2025
Dr. Alex Janke
Scarcity by Design and Opportunities for Abundance in Hospital-Based Emergency Care
For decades, crowding in U.S. emergency departments has boiled over into the public consciousness, with tragic stories of delayed care. Despite policymaker and regulatory attention to the issue, crowding is worse than ever. The primary driver, hospital ‘boarding’ of admitted patients in the emergency department, is routinely tolerated and worsening every year. In this presentation, Dr. Janke will make the case that this is scarcity by design, and that now is the key moment to pursue abundance in hospital-based emergency care.
Alexander T. Janke, MD, MHS, MSc, is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Michigan and a member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation. Trained in economics at Michigan, medicine at Wayne State, and health services research at Yale, he examines how emergency departments contribute to—and can alleviate—system‑level gaps in value, access, and safety. His scholarship has traced national trends in acute‑care utilization, pioneered predictive‑analytics approaches to reduce diagnostic error, and critiqued U.S. hospital bed shortages. Recent papers in JAMA Network Open and Annals of Emergency Medicine highlight the downstream impacts of capacity constraints on patient flow. A sought‑after policy voice, Dr. Janke testified before the Oregon Senate in 2024 on emergency‑department boarding, and serves as a Quality and Analytics Consultant for the Michigan Emergency Department Improvement Collaborative. His expertise includes quality improvement programs for diagnosis (emerging area) and health policy focused on boarding and crowding in emergency departments, and hospital capacity constraints.
CORE Talks are hosted by by Dr. Ari Friedman, Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute.