Obama chooses health policy scholar as the director for Medicare and Medicaid

President Obama will soon name Donald M. Berwick, MD, an iconoclastic scholar of health policy, to run Medicare and Medicaid, administration officials announced. Berwick, a pediatrician, is president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass. He has repeatedly challenged doctors and hospitals to provide better care at a lower cost. He says the government and insurers can increase the quality and efficiency of care by basing payments on the value of services, not the volume, the New York Times reports.