Commission Members

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.

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 in New York, NY. His research primarily focuses on physicians, the organization of the health care 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 Panel of Health Advisors. Dr. Casalino was a primary care physician in private practice for 20 years. He received his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and his Ph.D. in health services research from the University of California, Berkeley.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dana Gelb Safran, Sc.D., is head of measurement for Haven, the health care venture formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase. 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.

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.