Dr. Hays has held the position of professor of medicine in the UCLA Department of Medicine and a RAND Corporation consultant since 1997. Prior to this, he worked full-time as a behavioral scientist in the RAND Health program from 1984 until 1997. Dr. Hays is the principal investigator for the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (ARHQ) funded Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) study and principal investigator for a subcontract to UCLA from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) project. Dr. Hays is the director of the Analysis Core (AnC) of the UCLA/Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU) Research Center for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) “Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly”, a research training and mentoring program for junior- and mid-level, minority faculty intended to reduce health disparities for older African American and Latinos. As of December 2014, Dr. Hays has published 488 peer-reviewed articles, 13 reviews of the literature and 37 book chapters