Caroline Sloan, MD, MPH

Caroline Sloan is a general internist / primary care physician and health services researcher at Duke University, where she is an Assistant Professor of Medicine. Clinically, she works in a safety-net primary care clinic in North Durham, where many of her patients struggle to afford the care that is prescribed to them, even when they are insured. Her research is driven by a strong desire to make healthcare more accessible and equitable for older adults who have multiple chronic conditions and complex care plans. She studies the causes of financial barriers to care among patients with multiple chronic conditions (e.g., high out-of-pocket costs, administrative burden of applying for financial assistance programs) as well as the consequences of those financial barriers (e.g., poor disease control, medical debt). She currently has NIH funding to study the impact of recent out-of-pocket price transparency regulations on patient access and outcomes, and the ways that doctors and patients communicate about and make decisions based on out-of-pocket costs.