HCA, Geisinger CMOs joining MedPAC

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission will add five new members to its ranks this fall, including executives from HCA Healthcare and Geisinger, the U.S. Government Accountability Office announced Tuesday.

Dr. Jonathan Perlin, chief medical officer of Nashville-based HCA Healthcare, is one of the new MedPAC members. He previously served as undersecretary of health for the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department.

Dr. Jaewon Ryu, Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger's chief medical officer, will also serve on the panel.

The comptroller general, who heads the GAO, appoints MedPAC members.

MedPAC advises both the CMS and Congress on Medicare matters. Congress has historically agreed with MedPAC on reducing payments for off-campus facilities. Lawmakers passed a site-neutral policy that cut off-campus hospital outpatient departments' reimbursements after a 2013 MedPAC report that found Medicare was paying 141% more for an echocardiogram in outpatient settings than in a doctor's office.

The Obama administration's Dr. Karen DeSalvo will also join the commission. She served as acting assistant HHS secretary as well as national coordinator for health information technology, overseeing efforts to set national health IT strategy and policy. DeSalvo is now a professor of medicine and population health at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas in Austin.

MedPAC will also add Marjorie Ginsburg, founder of the California-based think tank Center for Healthcare Decisions, and Dr. Jonathan Jaffery, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.

Four MedPAC members will leave the panel as their terms expire: Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California at San Francisco; Dr. Alice Coombs, a critical-care specialist at Milton Hospital and South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass.; David Nerenz, director of the Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit; and Dr. Craig Samitt, chief clinical officer at Anthem.