Commission Members

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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