Colin R. Cooke, MD, MSC, MS

Asssociate Professor, Medicine, Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine
Faculty, Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy

734-615-9861
cookecr@umich.edu

Dr. Cooke is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan. He is also a faculty member of the Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy, a multidisciplinary center that aims to improve the efficiency of healthcare in the United States, by optimizing clinical practice and informing health policy. He received his undergraduate engineering degree from the University of Michigan in 1996, an M.D. from Ohio State University in 2000, and completed his Internal Medicine residency and Pulmonary & Critical Care fellowship at the University of Washington in 2007. During his fellowship he earned a Masters of Epidemiology from the University of Washington’s School of Public Health.  He returned to the University of Michigan in 2009 as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar where he earned a Masters of Health and Healthcare Research prior to his current appointment.

Dr. Cooke’s research focuses on how healthcare policy, the healthcare system, and individual patient characteristics interact to shape the quality and efficiency of ICU care delivery. This includes: (1) characterizing the drivers of variation in the use, quality, and costs of critical care services, with a specific focus on practice variation and regional and organizational contributors, and (2) understanding and removing racial, socioeconomic, and health insurance based disparities in critical care.  Fundamentally, much of Dr. Cooke’s research is based upon the premise that critical care, when delivered to inappropriate patients, may cause harm and increases healthcare spending without appreciable benefit. Through this work, Dr. Cooke’s collaborates closely with faculty in the Departments of Medicine, Surgery, Biostatistics, Health Management & Policy, and Economics.  Methodologically, this work employs analysis of both clinical and large-scale administrative databases, outcome prediction, multi-level and Bayesian modeling, cost-effectiveness simulation, and causal analysis.  He also utilizes novel data visualization techniques to characterize patterns of critical illness at the national level. His work is currently supported by a K08 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.