Five New MedPAC Members Appointed

Commission, regularly ignored by Congress, recently suggested eliminating and replacing the controversial MIPS physician evaluation program.

The Government Accountability Office has named five new members to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and reappointed one existing member to three-year terms expiring in April 2021. They replace the six members whose terms expired in April 2018.

The new members include a former national coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as well as a former under secretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Four of the new members are physicians.

They are:

• Karen De Salvo, MD: A professor of Medicine and Population Health at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, De Salvo was formerly Acting Assistant Secretary for Health and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
   
• Marjorie Ginsburg, BSN: The founding executive director of the Center for Healthcare Decisions Inc. at the University of California Davis, who served there from 1994-2016. That organization merged with the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research in 2017. She is an expert on end-of-life care, health plan benefits design, and strategies to reduce overuse of unnecessary medical care.
   
• Jonathan Jaffery, MD: A professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Jaffery is also the chief population health officer at UW Health and the president and CEO at UW Health ACO Inc., where he is responsible for the development, coordination, and implementation of UW Health’s population health management strategy.
   
• Jonathan Perlin, MD: The president of clinical services and chief medical officer of HCA Healthcare in Nashville, Perlin was previously under secretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He is responsible for improving performance at HCA's hospitals and outpatient centers.
   
• Jaewon Ryu, MD: The executive vice president and chief medical officer for Danville, Pennsylvania-based integrated delivery system Geisinger. He was previously president of Integrated Care Delivery at Humana and held leadership roles at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System and at Kaiser Permanente

Susan Thompson, RN, senior vice president of integration and ptimization at UnityPoint Health in West Des Moines, Iowa, was appointed to a second three-year term.

MedPAC, established in 1997 as a 17-member independent Congressional agency, advises and makes recommendations to Congress each year in two voluminous reports that are highly publicized. The healthcare experts who make up the Commission often suggest ways they think Medicare payments and programs can be streamlined or better administered,  but Congress often ignores their recommendations.

Members whose terms also expired in April are:

• Alice Coombs, MD, critical care specialist and anesthesiologist at Milton Hospital and South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
   
• Jack Hoadley, PhD, research professor emeritus at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
   
• David Nerenz, PhD, director of the Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.
   
• Rita Redberg, MD, a cardiologist and professor of clinical medicine at the University of San Francisco Medical Center.
   
• Craig Samitt, MD, executive vice president and chief clinical officer at Anthem Inc. in Indianapolis.