Ari Friedman, MD, PhD

Ari Friedman, MD, PhD, is an emergency physician and health economist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a tenure-track faculty member in the Departments of Emergency Medicine and Medical Ethics and Health Policy and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute.

Dr. Friedman earned his medical and doctoral degrees and applies advanced statistical methods to study how health care delivery and outcomes change in response to policy and market forces. His work examines emergency department crowding and access to alternative sites of unscheduled care, including urgent care clinics.

His research focuses on improving care for older adults in emergency settings. He collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to study goals-of-care alignment and has completed additional training in palliative emergency medicine. His National Institute on Aging–funded K23 research examines the management, diagnoses, and outcomes of abdominal pain in older patients using novel cohort and electronic health record data.

Dr. Friedman’s work also explores risk factors for delirium in the emergency department and strategies to improve identification and care pathways for vulnerable older adults.