Jennifer Smith
Senior Programmer

Jennifer Smith is a senior programmer at The Hilltop Institute. As such, she performs SAS programming in order to analyze large health care data sets for quality of care, outcome measurement studies, and program assessment. Ms. Smith’s current projects require using Medicare, Medicaid, and Maryland hospital data to assess quality, cost, and utilization patterns for mental health, substance abuse, and dual eligible populations. She also has developed algorithms to report on the quality of care for newly enrolled Medicaid participants requiring continuous care, such as pregnant women and people with chronic conditions.

Ms. Smith joined The Hilltop Institute as a research assistant/SAS programmer. Prior to that, she was a biostatistical programmer at Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she focused primarily on data analysis, writing for publication, and scientific presentation. As director of quality assurance and training at Discovery Alliance, Inc., Ms. Smith administered internal audits, developed new procedures for documentation and research, and was instrumental in formulating, establishing, and enforcing organizational policies and operating procedures. Prior to that, Ms. Smith gained experience as clinical data manager at Parexel International Corporation and research administrator at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Health Policy and Administration/Cook County Hospital.

Ms. Smith has an M.P.H. in epidemiology from UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago); a certificate of advanced study in bioethics and health policy from Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola University Chicago Graduate School; and a B.S. in mathematics from Wheaton College. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in health policy at UMBC.