Dr Hernandez-Boussard's background and expertise is in the field of population epidemiology, with concentration on accountability measures and health policy. A key focus of her research is the application of novel methods and tools to large clinical datasets for hypothesis generation, comparative effectiveness research, and the evaluation of quality healthcare delivery. She has contributed to the understanding and evaluation of standardized quality metrics and their application to quality improvement programs and value-based payments, including the effect of both disease indication and hospital characteristics on standard benchmark measurements.

Dr Hernandez-Boussard's research involves managing and manipulating clinical big data, which range from administrative claims data to electronic health records, and applying novel biostatistical techniques to the innovative assessment of clinical and policy-related research questions. This research enables her to create formal, statistically rigid, evaluations of healthcare data using unique combinations of large datasets. Her background in computational biology has given her a unique set of skills to apply to large clinical datasets for health services research.