Michelle S. Keller MPH, PhD

Dr. Keller is a health services researcher with training in epidemiology and qualitative research methods. Dr. Keller’s research focuses on improving medication management in older adults, reducing low-value health care, facilitating patient-clinician communication, and informatics. Her current work is focused on evaluating patient-centered deprescribing interventions for high-risk medications such as opioids, benzodiazepines, and sleep medications in older adults.

Dr. Keller recently conducted studies examining how clinicians incorporate patient comorbidities and risk factors when prescribing opioids, when and why clinicians adopt opioid risk mitigation strategies, and how health systems can use prescription-level data to understand population-level opioid and benzodiazepine prescribing. As part of her informatics research, Dr. Keller examines the effectiveness of health information technologies aimed at improving medical decision-making.

In this work, she has co-authored peer-reviewed papers on topics such as the development of an online patient decision aid for patients with inflammatory bowel disease, how computers at the bedside impede communication during rounds in critical care surgical units, and the effect of computerized appropriateness alerts on inpatient costs and length of stay. Prior to working in health care, Dr. Keller worked as a journalist for publications such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. She received her PhD and MPH in Health Policy and Management from UCLA and her BA in Human Biology from Stanford University. She is a member of the Cedars-Sinai Division of Informatics.