Cheryl Damberg

Cheryl is Principal Senior Researcher at RAND and RAND Distinguished Chair in Healthcare Payment Policy, with more than 25 years of experience as a health policy analyst. She is a recognized national expert in the areas of pay for performance (P4P) and value-based purchasing applications of performance measures, measures of cost-efficiency/resource use, and evaluating alternative payment models. She has conducted research that assesses the impact of alternative payment models, including pay-for-value programs and identifies ways in which to improve the design of the scoring systems used to determine value-based payments so that they reduce the likelihood of misclassifying providers and avoid creating unintended effects.  Her work also focuses on understanding the changes providers and health systems are making to improve quality and costs. She also is the Principal Investigator of the RAND Center of Excellence on High Performing Health Systems, a five-year grant from AHRQ.  Prior to her RAND work, she served as the Director of Research for the Pacific Business Group on Health, where she led early efforts to measure the quality of provider organizations and report comparative performance results to consumers.  Her professional experience also includes serving as a senior consultant to Fortune 100 firms for the MEDSTAT Group and as a research fellow in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Cheryl received her Ph.D. in Public Policy from the RAND Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and a Masters of Public Health from the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.  She has published extensively on value-based purchasing and has served as a technical expert on numerous project advisory and policy committees, including the National Quality Forum, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Veteran’s Administration.