Robert Berenson, is an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington DC. He is an expert in health care policy, particularly Medicare, with experience practicing medicine, serving in senior positions in two Administrations, and helping organize and manage a successful preferred provider organization. His primary research and policy interests currently are in the areas of payment and delivery system reform, market concentration, and performance measurement. 

 

Dr. Berenson serves on the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee, established by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015.  In 2012, he completed service on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, including two years as Vice-Chair. From 1998-2000, he was in charge of Medicare payment policy and private health plan contracting in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Previously, he served on the Carter White House Domestic Policy Staff.  Dr. Berenson is a board-certified internist who practiced for twenty years, the last twelve in a Washington, D.C. group practice, and while practicing helped organize and manage a successful PPO serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. 

 

He was co-author, with Walter Zelman, of The Managed Care Blues & How to Cure Them, and, with Rick Mayes, Medicare Prospective Payment and the Shaping of U.S. Health Care. He publishes frequently in journals that include the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. Dr. Berenson received his B.S. from Brandeis University and his M.D. degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and is on the adjunct faculty of the George Washington University School of Public Health. 

Elliott S. Fisher, MD, MPH is Director of Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice and the John E Wennberg Distinguished Professor of Health Policy, Medicine, and Community & Family Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine. His early research focused on exploring the causes of the two-fold differences in spending observed across U.S. regions and health care systems, on understanding the consequences of these variations for health and health care, and on the development and testing of approaches to performance measurement and payment reform that can support improvement. He helped develop the concept of Accountable Care Organizations and carried out the research that provided the rationale for their adoption by both public and private payers. His current research focuses on identifying the policy, market and organizational factors that enable health systems to improve their performance. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and completed his internal medicine residency and public health training at the University of Washington. He serves on the Boards of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, where he helped launch ReThink Health. He is co-director of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Rahul Rajkumar, MD, JD, is the Deputy Director at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is responsible for developing and implementing innovative health care service delivery programs that will help improve and update the Nation’s health care delivery system. This Center has a growing portfolio and is testing various payment and service delivery models that aim to achieve better care for patients, smarter health care spending, and a healthier future for all Americans. Dr. Rajkumar joined CMS in 2012. As a member of the leadership team, he helped to build the Innovation Center from its startup phase and managed the design and launch of the Center's models. His responsibilities include managing the Center's operations, budget and portfolio, and the design and expansion of new payment models -- and building strong working relationships with health care policy leaders within and outside of HHS. Prior to arriving at CMS, Dr. Rajkumar was a consultant at McKinsey and Company, where he helped the senior management of leading hospitals and health care payers respond to national reform and the design and operational aspects of accountable care organizations. Dr. Rajkumar previously practiced hospital-based medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he completed his residency training in Internal Medicine. He has published articles in journals such as JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, and given national presentations on topics including health care policy, quality of care, payment reform and the transformation of clinical operations. Dr. Rajkumar holds a BA in History from Yale University, an MD from Yale School of Medicine and a JD from Yale Law School. Dr. Rajkumar is a recipient of a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship. He is a practicing internist and is married with two children.

Bob Kocher, MD is a Partner at Venrock and focuses on healthcare IT and services investments. He currently serves on the Board of Jiff, Aledade, and Lyra Health and is a Board Observer at Grand Rounds, Stride, and Doctor on Demand. He is a former Director at Castlight Health (CSLT) and currently serves as an Advisor to Castlight. Additionally, he is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC, and Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution Engleberg Center for Health Reform. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Harvard Medical School Health Care Policy Department, National Institute of Healthcare Management (NIHCM), and ChildObesity180. He is also a member of the Health Affairs Editorial Board. Prior to Venrock, Bob served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy on the National Economic Council. In the Obama Administration, Bob was one of the shapers of the Affordable Care Act focusing on cost, quality, and delivery system reform and health IT policy. He was one of the leaders of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” childhood obesity initiative, led the formation of the Partnership for a Healthier America, and served on the Federal Advisory Panel charged with developing a national obesity strategy. He also co-founded the Health Data Initiative with Todd Park, a joint effort of HHS and the Institute of Medicine, to release healthcare data to spur private sector innovation to improve healthcare cost and quality. For the past five years, he has served as Co-Chair of the Health Datapalooza. Before the White House, Bob was a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he led McKinsey Global Institute’s healthcare economics work and Center for United States Health System Reform. He has worked widely across the US and international healthcare systems to improve regulatory policy, economic performance, labor productivity, clinical outcomes, and patient experience. Bob received undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington and a medical degree from George Washington University. He completed a research fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health, and went on to complete his internal medicine residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School.

Ateev Mehrotra, M.D., M.P.H. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mehrotra’s research focuses on quality and cost measurement in the health care system and application of those measurements such as pay-for-performance incentives. Dr. Mehrotra receives his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco and completed his residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Boston.

Jeff Clough, MD, MBA is a Health Services Researcher at the Duke Clinical Research Institute who is well published in costs of health care, health spending, Medicare, physician payment, and alternative payment systems. Additionally, Dr. Clough is an internal medicine physician who works at Duke Primary Care. Prior to this, Dr. Clough worked for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation for 3 years.

Dr. Beckman, a board-certified internist, is Clinical Professor of Medicine, Family Medicine, and Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He serves as Chief Medical Officer of EagleDream Health, a company that offers employers, health plans, ACOs and medical group’s assistance in identifying areas of overuse and underuse within their network as well as offering population management. EDH also provides assistance in network development to strategically increase keepage within health systems and ACO’s. Recently, EDH has expanded its foci to include the condition specific relationship between quality and cost, facilitating the identification of high value best practices and the identification of low value care. Dr. Beckman’s career has focused on creating win-win partnerships as organizations focus on improving the value of care. He has provided consultative services to Blue Cross of Massachusetts, Atrius Health, the Commonwealth Fund, the California Health Care Foundation, the California Improvement Network, the American Medical Association, NEQCA, Capital Blue Cross, the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency, and Massachusetts Health Quality Partners.

Kiran Kakarala specializes in head and neck cancer surgery and reconstruction at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he went on to complete residency training in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck surgery at Harvard, and then fellowship training in head and neck cancer surgery at the Ohio State University James Cancer Center. He serves an Associate Editor for the Quality Improvement section of Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation. His research interest is in increasing value in head and neck cancer care.

Born and raised in Alma, Kansas, Josh Umbehr, MD, majored in human nutritional sciences with a minor in biology, and completed extensive research on the effects of vitamin A on lung cancer. He graduated from The University of Kansas School of Medicine and completed his Family Medicine residency at Wesley Medical Center. After completing his training to become a Board Certified Family Physician, he opened Atlas MD. His cash-only clinic embodies his ideal medical practice, one where he shrugs off the burdens and restrictions of government regulation daily. That way he can focus solely on his patients.

Neil Shah is a board-certified internal medicine physician at CareMore Health and Clinical Assistant Professor at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas. He relocated to Texas after twelve years in Boston, MA where he completed his medical training and then served as an attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute with a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School. He served on the board of directors for Physicians Insurance Agency of Massachusetts and was appointed to serve on the special commission for graduate medical education by the Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services. Dr. Shah attended medical school at Boston University through the accelerated seven-year medical education program and completed internal medicine residency at Cambridge Health Alliance, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. He has received training in value-based health care delivery at Dell Medical School and Harvard Business School.

Dr. Chiweshe is currently in his final year as a Preventive Medicine Resident at the University of Kentucky Medical. He is in the Cancer Prevention and Control Track through the American Cancer Society (ACS) Physician Training in Preventive Medicine Award and serves as a member of the American Cancer Society Leadership council. Most recently he worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield Venture Partners; a collaborative investment vehicle that seeks to invest in emerging technologies in the healthcare industry with the objective to promote innovation by increasing efficiency and lowering costs. He also has experience working as a medical associate for the University of Nebraska’s Technology Transfer Offices to drive commercialization of translational research and intellectual property to where they benefit health care and patients on a larger scale. These experiences have emphasized the need for improvement in how we approach Health care management. Dr. Chiweshe’s Master in Public Health concentration is Health Management and Policy. This concentration plays a crucial role in many of the changes needed in health care and aligns with his leadership interest. He is currently serving as President of the Resident Physician Section for the American College of Preventive medicine (ACPM). Additionally, he is a member of the Committee on Business and Economics for the American Medical Association, the UK Healthcare Clinical Quality committee, and the Business Development committee for ACPM. He received his B.S degree in molecular biology and Medical Degree from the University of Nebraska. He completed his internship in General Surgery.