Led team that designed, evaluated, and evaluated the Inpatient Rehabilitation

Prospective Payment System, under contract to CMS (2000–2009).

Conducted research used by OMB, CBO, and other policy modelers to assess the

legislature, media, and state agencies (2020–2021). Presented multiple times

Tennessee Department of Education on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Presented options to address the insolvency of the Medicare Trust Fund to staff of

Traditional Media (e.g., newspaper, broadcast networks, magazine, etc.)

WKRN: Life expectancy in Tennessee is far below the national average; what can

be done to change that? Featuring Melinda B. Buntin (Video). October 5, 2023

News4 Nashville: Vanderbilt study finds TN counties without mask requirements

WKRN: 3 reasons why Tennessee is seeing lower COVID-19 death rates than

Nashville NewsChannel 5: Inside Politics: How A Block Grant Will Impact

Value Based Care, June 2018 (link)

NPR New Day to Day, Interview, July 2007

Washington Post Radio, Interview, October 2006

Washington Post Radio, Interview, October 2006

SHRM Magazine, Quoted, December 2006

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Quoted, November 2006

Investor’s Business Daily, Quoted, November 2006

Time Magazine, Quoted, November 2006

PolitiFact, Quoted, November 2023 (link)

2020 (link)

Nashville Post, What does the CMS block grant plan mean for the state? January

31

Modern Healthcare, Tennessee proposes first-of-its-kind plan to cap Medicaid

Axios, Health Care Vitals: Nashville. August 26, 2019 (link)

Kaiser Health News, ‘If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep It.’ Biden’s Invokes

Politico, Obamacare fight obscures America’s real health care crisis: Money.

Managed Care Cast of the American Journal of Managed Care, Overheard at

AcademyHealth: Health Policy, Social Determinants, and Data. February 5, 2019

NEJM Catalyst, Signal or Noise? Navigating Health Care Policy – Part I. July 3,

2018 (link)

BirdDog, Competition shakes up Tennessee ACA exchange: Highlights urban-

Modern Healthcare, Industry battles Medicare for All traction. April 27, 2019

JAMA, How Value-Based Medicare Payments Exacerbate Health Care

Grateful For This Holiday Season. December 6, 2017 (link)

Alzheimer’s Disease and Cognitive Impairment in the Southern Community Cohort

Study

National Cancer Institute 7/1/2018 – 6/30/2019

Co-Investigator $394,548

(ADRD) by studying ADRD as a health outcome among the Southern Community Cohort

Study (SCCS). The SCCS provides a unique opportunity for us to examine disparities in

ADRD through longitudinal study of a cohort that is commonly understudied. The goal of

this research is to better understand disparities in health outcomes and care access for older

adults at risk of developing ADRD.

Co-Principal Investigator $274,366

chronic conditions, we conducted a series of analyses that will examine Medicare spending on

Subcontract from University of Chicago $115,499

Administration (HRSA) on hospital system participation in the 340B program to hospital

community benefit spending, safety-net engagement and prescription drug claims. We pursued

a number of in-depth cross-sectional analyses to characterize the impact of 340B qualification

on hospital systems compared to non-340B qualified hospital systems and to estimate the size

of the program.

Health Policy Modeling and Simulation Tools

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 12/15/17 – 7/14/18

Co-Principal Investigator $173,740

Models simulating the effects of policy changes on health insurance coverage and costs have

proven critical to recent debates about reforms to the Affordable Care Act. While it is hard to

imagine how the debates of the past year would have unfolded without such models of the

proposed changes for the stability of health insurance markets. In addition, little has been

invested in developing models in other areas, including models of how providers will

respond to payment reform, how healthy behavior changes might shape longer-term costs

and outcomes, and how community contexts shape health. We proposed to develop a

research and model development agenda with input from a forum of nationally recognized

begin the research and methods development needed to guide policy at the local, regional,

and national level.

Slowing Medicare Spending: Dual-Eligible Beneficiaries

The Commonwealth Fund 5/1/16 – 1/30/18

Principal Investigator $163,636

beneficiaries, we examined what factors, including use of institutional long-term care, drive

see disproportionate growth in the size of their dual-eligible populations relative to the

Tennessee whose goal is to improve the health and wellbeing of all Nashvillians.

Educating Policymakers on State Medicaid Experiments

Investigator $40,000

We developed and disseminated two short educational pieces on states’ experiments with the

types of Medicaid policies most likely to be included in emerging federal policy. The first

brief covered implementing enrollee cost-sharing, wellness incentives, and enforcement

mechanisms, and include a include a survey of how cost-sharing requirements, wellness

incentives, and enforcement mechanisms are working in other states, and what may be gleaned

as best practices for states considering implementing these waiver provisions. The second

brief covered developing and implementing HSAs, and focus on the unique challenges of

implementing HSAs for lower-income populations, and how states have attempted to

implement HSAs in a way that helps to assuage common enrollee barriers and state

administrative burden.

Tennessee

Academy Health 2/1/16 – 6/30/17

Principal Investigator $130,000

The goal of this project is to develop a series of risk prediction algorithms for infant mortality

infant loss in Davidson county, TN. The project uses several sources of data including, vital

records and Medicaid claims data and expands the work of the Welcome Baby program

(Tennessee Department of Health). The end goal of this project is to identify distal predictors

of infant mortality and provide pregnant women and their families relevant services and

resources to avoid infant loss. This project is an essential step in understanding the predictors

of infant mortality and supporting systematic interventions.

Effectiveness of State Policies

Over the last decade, the number of prescriptions written for opioid pain relievers (OPR)

literature, presentations at national meetings, and social media and webinars aimed at key

The Commonwealth Fund 5/1/15 – 6/30/16

Principal Investigator $220,084

This project will provide Medicare data analysis necessary to complement Vanderbilt’s

research efforts under Commonwealth Fund grant #20140698. It will build on earlier work to

expenses. By examining Medicare post-acute care spending trends and market variations at

the hospital referral region level, the team should be able to determine the extent to which

significantly slower than private insurance spending per person. To inform policies aimed at

sustaining slower Medicare growth for the long term, we will assess recent Medicare

spending trends and examine geographic areas and health service sectors where spending is

high or growth more rapid. The analyses will focus on markets where payment reforms have

taken hold as well as those where post-acute care costs appear to be significantly higher than

Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)

The Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network (CDRN) 1/1/14 – 6/30/15

This funding will help to grow a clinical data research network across the Vanderbilt Health

Affiliated Network. In addition, the network will reach practices across the nation in

recruit 3 cohorts related to obesity (10,000 patients), coronary heart disease (10,000 patients)

integration and interoperability, clinical decision support, and patient-facing informatics

tools.

Competition Among Post-Acute Care Providers

Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) R01 9/30/09 – 7/31/13

The goal of the project was to enhance our understanding of the causes and effects of

policies have both influenced competition in these markets and modified the effects of

"tracer" conditions: stroke, hip fracture, and lower extremity joint replacement.

Post-Acute Costs and Outcomes after Medicare’s Reimbursement Changes

National Institute on Aging R01. 3/1/08 – 2/28/11

Principal Investigator (transferred to Neeraj Sood due to move to HHS) $1,396,451

Our objectives for this project included examining the following: How changes in payment

of choice of PAC setting, and how they are affected by patient characteristics, discharging

to which payment policy changes affected clinical and financial outcomes of interest through

changes in the sites where patients received care versus changes in outcomes conditional on

incentives and information intended to help patients make more cost-conscious health care

decisions influence the amount, type, and quality of care used, and how responses differ

across population groups, particularly the sick and the poor.

Implementing a National Insurance Connector

Principal Investigator $214,066

This project explored the potential designs for and effects of, implementing a national health

individuals a structured choice of health insurance plans.

Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts (COMPARE)

Team Co-Leader

Sustainable Growth Rate: What Areas of Physician Spending are Growing Rapidly and

Why?

Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) 9/15/07 – 12/12/08

Principal Investigator $298,551

about the methods used to update payment rates for those services and about Medicare’s

population. The primary goal of this research project was to analyze the physicians’ services

that have seen the most rapid increases in volume in recent years.

National Institute on Aging 8/1/05 – 9/30/08

Investigator $24,942

declining disability, increased treated prevalence of disease, technological change and

Medicare expenditures for the oldest Medicare beneficiaries.

Randomized Trial of Care Management to Improve End of Life Care

Veterans Administration IIR 02-294-1 1/01/04 – 2/31/08

Health Economist $280,000

in improving quality of care for patients with less than one-year life expectancy.

Access, and Refinements

CMS 9/30/04 – 12/30/06

Principal Investigator $1,192,356

the implementation of prospective payment; it also provided CMS with specific

recommendations for refining the IRF PPS.

Evaluation of Corporate Disease Management Program

Principal Investigator: Nicole Lurie

This project explored potential changes to the Medicare hospice payment system, with a

California Health Care Foundation 11/15/04 – 1/31/06

Care Minimum Data Set (MDS), an administrative data source on nursing home patients

collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.

Comparison of Medicare Spending For Beneficiaries with Lower Extremity Joint

Replacement

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission 9/24/04 – 4/30/05

Reaching the Uninsured through the Individual Market for Health Insurance

California Healthcare Foundation 11/1/01 – 10/01/05

Assessing Variations in Managed Care Plan Performance and Selective Enrollment of

The Commonwealth Fund 6/1/96 – 6/1/00

Medicare; Medicaid; Aging; Health expenditures; Health care financing and