Commission Members

Chairman: Michael Chernew, Ph.D.HideDetails

Michael Chernew, Ph.D., is the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation (HMR) Lab in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Chernew’s research examines several areas related to improving the health care system including studies of novel benefit designs, Medicare Advantage, alternative payment models, low value care and the causes and consequences of rising health care spending.

Dr. Chernew served on MedPAC from 2008 to 2014 and was Vice Chair from 2012 to 2014. In 2000, 2004, and 2010, he served on technical advisory panels for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that reviewed the assumptions used by Medicare actuaries to assess the financial status of Medicare trust funds. He is a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisors and Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Health Connector Board. Dr. Chernew is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is currently a co-editor of the American Journal of Managed Care.

Dr. Chernew earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. In 1998, he was awarded the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators by the Association of University Programs in Public Health. In 1999, he received the Alice S. Hersh Young Investigator Award from the Association of Health Services Research.

Harvard Medical School Boston, MA Term Expires: 2023

Vice Chairman: Paul B. Ginsburg, Ph.D.HideDetails

Paul Ginsburg, Ph.D., is the Leonard Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and professor of health policy at the University of Southern California, where he is affiliated with the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. He directs the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy. Prior positions include founder and president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, founding executive director of the Physician Payment Review Commission, senior economist at RAND, and deputy assistant director at the Congressional Budget Office. Dr. Ginsburg earned his doctorate in economics from Harvard University.
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Brookings Institution Washington, DC Term Expires: 2022

Lawrence Casalino, M.D., Ph.D.HideDetails

Lawrence Casalino, M.D., Ph.D., is the Livingston Professor of Public Health and Chief of the Division of Healthcare Policy and Economics in the Weill Cornell Department of Healthcare Policy and Research, New York, NY. His research primarily focuses on physicians, the organization of the healthcare delivery system, and payment and regulatory policies that impact physicians and the delivery system as well as patients. Among other appointments, Dr. Casalino served as a senior advisor to the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He currently serves on the Congressional Budget Office’s Board of Health Advisors. Dr. Casalino was a primary care physician in private practice for 20 years. He received his MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and his PhD in Health Services Research from the University of California, Berkeley.

Weill Cornell Department of Healthcare Policy and Research New York, NY Term Expires: 2022

Brian DeBusk, Ph.D.HideDetails

Brian DeBusk, Ph.D., is chief executive officer of DeRoyal Industries in Powell, TN, which operates in the surgical, orthopedic, wound care, and health care information technology markets. He also serves as vice chairman of Lincoln Memorial University in rural Tennessee, which includes graduate medical education programs for physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurses. Dr. DeBusk’s prior employment includes General Electric, Inobis, and Pace Energy Systems. He has served on the faculty of both the University of Tennessee and Lincoln Memorial University, teaching classes in information technology and business strategy. Dr. DeBusk holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Vanderbilt University and a master of business administration from Emory University.
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DeRoyal Industries Powell, TN Term Expires: 2022

Karen DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc.HideDetails

Karen DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., MSc., is chief health officer at Google Health. She also is an adjunct professor of medicine and population health at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin and co-convener of the National Alliance to Impact the Social Determinants of Health. She is also president of the Society of General Internal Medicine and serves on the boards of directors for Welltower. Before joining the University of Texas, Dr. DeSalvo was dually appointed as the acting assistant secretary for health and the national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services. She has also served as the New Orleans health commissioner and as vice dean for community affairs and health policy at Tulane School of Medicine. Dr. DeSalvo received her medical and public health degrees from Tulane University School of Medicine, where she also completed her residency and fellowship in internal medicine. She has a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Google Health Palo Alto, CA Term Expires: 2021

Marjorie Ginsburg, B.S.N., M.P.H.HideDetails

Marjorie Ginsburg, B.S.N., M.P.H., is the founding executive director of the Center for Healthcare Decisions Inc., which she ran from 1994 through mid-2016. In that role, she was responsible for the design, implementation, and evaluation of projects and programs that fostered civic engagement around health policy issues that affected individuals and society at large. Among the policy issues Ms. Ginsburg studied were end-of-life care, health plan benefits design, and strategies to reduce overuse of unnecessary medical care. Ms. Ginsburg currently volunteers as a Medicare counselor with California’s State Health Insurance Assistance Program (called the Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program) in Sacramento, CA

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Sacramento, CA Term Expires: 2021

David Grabowski, Ph.D.HideDetails

David Grabowski, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. His research primarily focuses on the economics of aging, with an emphasis on post-acute and long-term care financing, organization, and delivery of services. Dr. Grabowski served as a member of two CMS technical expert panels that focused on the home health prospective payment system and the quality measures used in the home health value-based purchasing model. He serves on the editorial board of several journals, including the American Journal of Health Economics and Medical Care Research & Review. Dr. Grabowski received his Ph.D. in public policy from the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Harvard Medical School Boston, MA Term Expires: 2023

Jonathan Jaffery, M.D., M.S., M.M.M.HideDetails

Jonathan Jaffery, M.D., M.S., M.M.M., is a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Jaffery serves as SVP/chief population health officer at UW Health and as president of UW Health ACO Inc., where he is responsible for the overall development, coordination, and implementation of the population health strategy. A board-certified nephrologist, Dr. Jaffery holds a B.A. in Russian literature from the University of Michigan and an M.D. from The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency and nephrology fellowship at the University of Vermont. A former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow and chief medical officer for the Wisconsin State Medicaid program, Dr. Jaffery has graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.

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University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Madison, WI Term Expires: 2021

Amol Navathe, M.D., Ph.D.HideDetails

Amol Navathe, M.D., Ph.D., is co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute and associate director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. He is also an assistant professor at Penn and staff physician at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Navathe’s research group designs, tests, and evaluates payment models for national insurers and state Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. He leads the American Hospital Association’s national bundled payment collaborative to disseminate evidence-based best practices. Among other appointments, Dr. Navathe was formerly a Managing Director, Healthcare Value Transformation, at Navigant. Dr. Navathe received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in Health Care Management and Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Philadelphia, PA Term Expires: 2022

Jonathan Perlin, M.D., Ph.D., M.S.H.A.HideDetails

Jonathan Perlin, M.D., Ph.D., M.S.H.A., is the president of clinical services and chief medical officer of HCA Healthcare in Nashville, TN. In that role, he has leadership responsibility for clinical services and improving performance at HCA’s hospitals and other sites of service. Before joining HCA, Dr. Perlin was Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Perlin is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has faculty appointments at Vanderbilt University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Perlin received his Ph.D. in pharmacology and his medical

degree from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he also completed his residency training in internal medicine.

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HCA Healthcare Nashville, TN Term Expires: 2021

Bruce Pyenson, F.S.A., M.A.A.A.HideDetails

Bruce Pyenson, F.S.A., M.A.A.A., is principal and consulting actuary at Milliman Inc. in New York, NY. His work has focused on diverse aspects of health care and insurance, including recent work related to alternative payment models for accountable care organizations, such as shared savings, as well as financial modeling of therapeutic interventions. He has co-authored publications on such topics as the cost-effectiveness of lung cancer screening, pandemic influenza, and site-of-service cost differences for chemotherapy. Mr. Pyenson is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. He is adjunct clinical associate professor of New York University's College of Global Public Health.

Milliman, Inc. New York, NY Term Expires: 2022

Betty Rambur, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N.HideDetails

Betty Rambur, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N., is the Routhier Endowed Chair for Practice and Professor of Nursing in the College of Nursing at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, RI, where she has conducted research on such topics as alternative payment models, telehealth nursing, and Big Data. Prior to joining the University of Rhode Island, Dr. Rambur served on the Green Mountain Care Board—a five member regulatory, innovation, and evaluation board that has broad responsibility for cost-containment and oversight of Vermont’s transition to post fee-for-service provider reimbursement. Previously, Dr. Rambur served as Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at the University of Vermont and was also Chairperson for the North Dakota Health Task Force, a statewide healthcare financing reform initiative. Dr. Rambur received her Ph.D. in nursing from Rush University.

University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Term Expires: 2023

Wayne J. Riley, M.D.HideDetails

Wayne J. Riley, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., is president of the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Health Sciences University, where he also holds tenured professorships in both internal medicine and of health policy & management. Immediately prior to joining Downstate, Dr. Riley served as clinical professor of medicine and adjunct professor of healthcare management at Vanderbilt University. He was the also 10th president and chief executive officer of Meharry Medical College. He began his career at Baylor College of Medicine, where he completed residency training in internal medicine and held several key administrative posts including Vice President and Vice Dean for Health Affairs and Governmental Relations, Assistant Dean for Education, and Assistant Chief of Medicine at Ben Taub General Hospital––a leading public safety net teaching hospital. Dr. Riley is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, where he served as vice chair and chair of the NAM Section on Education, Research and the Administration of Health Services. He is also president emeritus of the American College of Physicians––the nation’s largest medical specialty society representing internal medicine and president elect of the Society of Medical Administrators––an organization of fifty of the nation’s leading physician-executives. He is an independent director of HCA Healthcare, Inc. Dr. Riley earned a B.A. in anthropology from Yale University, an M.P.H. in health systems management from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the M.D. from Morehouse School of Medicine, and an M.B.A. from Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business.

State University of New York Downstate Brooklyn, NY Term Expires: 2023

Jaewon Ryu, M.D., J.D.HideDetails

Jaewon Ryu, M.D., J.D., is the president and CEO for Geisinger, an integrated health care system headquartered in Danville, PA, that comprises hospitals, employed providers, a health plan, a medical school, and research and innovation centers. Before going to Geisinger, he served as president of integrated care delivery at Humana and previously held leadership roles at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System and at Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Ryu received his undergraduate education at Yale University and his medical and law degrees from the University of Chicago, after which he completed his residency training in emergency medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
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Geisinger Health System Danville, PA Term Expires: 2021

Dana Gelb Safran, Sc.D.HideDetails

Dana Gelb Safran, Sc.D., is head of measurement for Haven, the health care venture formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase (ABJ). In that role, she is part of the organization’s core leadership team and is responsible for applying data, analytics, and measurement to optimize the venture’s success. Dr. Safran was previously chief performance measurement and improvement officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA). As an architect of the BCBSMA Alternative Quality Contract and the leader responsible for its unique use of behavioral economics and payer-provider collaboration to reduce cost while improving quality, Dr. Safran is widely recognized as having contributed to the national push toward value-based payment. Before joining BCBSMA, she led a research institute at Tufts University School of Medicine dedicated to developing patient-reported measures of health and health care quality. She remains on the faculty at Tufts and serves on a number of state and national advisory bodies related to health care quality and affordability. She earned her master’s and doctor of science degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Haven, a health care venture formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase Boston, MA Term Expires: 2023

Susan Thompson, M.S., B.S.N.HideDetails

Susan Thompson, M.S., B.S.N., is senior vice president of integration and optimization with UnityPoint Health, an integrated delivery system serving Iowa, central and western Illinois, and central Wisconsin. Ms. Thompson is also the chief executive officer of UnityPoint Health Accountable Care LC, an Iowa limited liability company that brings together a diverse group of health care providers including hospitals, employed and independent physicians, and other providers, as well as other health initiatives. Previously, she was president and chief executive officer of UnityPoint Health–Fort Dodge, which serves a predominantly rural and aging population and includes a sole community hospital, a primary care and multispecialty physician group, management contracts with five critical access hospitals throughout the region, and a Pioneer Accountable Care Organization. She also served in successive clinical and management positions at Trinity Regional Medical Center, as intensive care staff nurse, director of quality systems, assistant director of patient-focused care, chief information officer, chief operating officer, and chief executive officer. Ms. Thompson obtained her B.S. in nursing and her M.S. in health services management from Clarkson College in Omaha, NE.

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UnityPoint Health West Des Moines, IA Term Expires: 2021

Pat Wang, J.D.HideDetails

Pat Wang, J.D., is president and chief executive officer of Healthfirst in New York, NY. Healthfirst is a not-for-profit provider-sponsored health plan that serves Medicare enrollees, including those who are eligible for low-income subsidies and those who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. Healthfirst incorporates a value-based payment model that aligns incentives with hospital and physician partners. Ms. Wang previously served as senior vice president of finance and managed care for the Greater New York Hospital Association. She received her law degree cum laude from the New York University School of Law.

Healthfirst New York, NY Term Expires: 2022