Ming Tai-Seale, PhD ‘95

Dr. Ming Tai-Seale is Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Family Medicine and a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She also serves as the Director of Outcomes Analysis and Scholarship and the Director of Research and Learning in the Population Health Services at UC San Diego Health. Her research focuses on medical practice, patient-physician communication, and mental health economics. Dr. Tai-Seale pioneered the use of user action log in electronic health records to study physician practices and their impact on physician wellbeing. She was the first to utilize video and audio recordings of clinical encounters to analyze time allocation in medical practice.

Dr. Tai-Seale is the lead author of two award-winning papers on physician time allocation and mental health services in primary care, which received the Paper-of-the-Year Award from AcademyHealth in 2008. As Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI, her research has received funding from numerous public agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her work has also been supported by private organizations such as the Doris Bry Trust, the Physician Foundation, the Step Family Foundation, the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the American Medical Foundation.

She earned a degree in Medicine from Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, a Master of Public Health from Emory University, and PhD in Health Services Research from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.