Physician informaticist Arnold Milstein, M.D., has been named to the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee.
The General Accounting Office and U.S. Comptroller General David Walker named Milstein as the newest member of the MedPAC. Milstein is medical director of the Pacific Business Group on Health and a consultant for Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
He has expertise in performance improvement for large healthcare providers and purchasers, according to the GAO.
MedPAC, which advises Congress on Medicare policy issues, also recently appointed other new members, including: John Bertko, vice president and chief actuary at Humana; Francis Crosson, executive director of the Permanente Foundation; and William Scanlon, a health policy consultant who was managing director of healthcare issues at the GAO until last month.
Commission members Sheila Burke and Ralph Muller were re-appointed. Five other commission members have terms that expire in April 2005 and six have terms that expire in April 2006.
Milstein has been a leader in the Care Focused Purchasing Initiative, a coalition of 28 large U.S. employers that announced in March they will mine data to create hospital and physician report cards using quality and cost measurements.
The group plans to distribute the information to their employees and distribute the information to their 2 million employees to create "a more open and rational" healthcare market.
Their Care Focused Purchasing initiative would glean data on hospital and physician performance from their own employee healthcare claims records, as well as from government and participating health plan databases.
Mercer, which is providing staff support for the venture, issued a statement that the group has commitments from Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Humana to supply data and expertise to the project.
