Four New Board Reps Named to MedPAC

Four new members have been appointed and two members reappointed to the 17-member Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the General Accountability Office has announced. Their terms will expire in 2013.

The new members are the following:

• Scott Armstrong is the president and CEO of Group Health Cooperative, a consumer governed health system with headquarters in Seattle that serves 650,000 enrollees. Armstrong has worked at Group Health since 1986, serving in positions ranging from assistant hospital administrator to chief operating officer; he became president and CEO in 2005.
• Katherine Baicker, PhD, is a professor of health economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, where her research focuses on health insurance finance and the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of care. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and is on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers.
• Mary Naylor, PhD, RN, is the Marian S. Ware Professor in Gerontology and director of the New Courtland Center for Transitions and Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia. Since 1989, Naylor has led an interdisciplinary program of research designed to improve the quality of care, decrease unnecessary hospitalizations, and reduce healthcare costs for vulnerable community based elders. She is also the national program director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program, Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, aimed at generating, disseminating, and translating research to understand how nurses contribute to quality patient care.
• Cori Uccello is a senior health fellow of the American Academy of Actuaries, serving as the actuarial profession's chief public policy liaison on health issues. Before joining the academy in 2001, she was a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, and previously held positions at the Congressional Budget Office and the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company.

The reappointed members, whose new terms will expire in April 2013, are Thomas M. Dean, MD, a family physician in Wessington Springs, SD; and Herb B. Kuhn, president and CEO of the Missouri Hospital Association.