Lori Timmins

Lori Timmins’s work focuses on using rigorous statistical and econometric techniques to evaluate public policy programs, particularly those designed to improve health care delivery and reduce costs for the chronically ill.

Since joining Mathematica in 2014, Timmins has worked on a range of projects related to health care delivery and youth with disabilities. She currently leads the evaluation of two programs funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services under the Health Care Innovation Awards, Round Two; these programs target emergency department use and reproductive health. She is also the deputy project director for an evaluation of an initiative designed to help more than 140,000 clinician practices nationwide achieve large-scale health transformation. In addition, Timmins is leading an analysis of the market for home-based primary care, investigating the types of providers and practices that deliver care in the home and characterizing the users of such care, who are predominately elderly and frail. She has previously assessed whether a nationwide hospital program to reduce adverse events reduced Medicare expenditures, and she has produced feedback reports for primary care practices involved in a multipayer program designed to strengthen primary care delivery.

Timmins’s disability work at Mathematica includes studying the employment outcomes of youth with disabilities. She was the co-principal investigator on a study to assess the feasibility of a rigorous impact evaluation of a transition program designed to improve adult employment. She also led quantitative analyses to examine the impact of early work experience on future labor markets. Currently, she is conducting a systematic review of the relationship between employment and health. This work, funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, studies the evidence on the extent to which employment affects health outcomes and well-being, with a particular focus on low-income adults.

Prior to Mathematica, Timmins was a researcher at Ireland’s Geary Institute, where she supported the meta-evaluation of a series of early childhood interventions in disadvantaged Irish communities. She also worked as an associate economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, where she analyzed consumer inflation, consumer sentiment, and financial literacy outcomes across different socioeconomic groups. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of British Columbia.