Adam Boehler Tapped by Azar to Serve as Senior Value-Based Care Advisor

Adam Boehler, currently director of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), has also been named the senior advisor for value-based transformation and innovation, HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) Secretary Alex Azar announced.

Since April, Boehler has served as deputy administrator and director of CMMI. Boehler is the former CEO and founder of Landmark Health, a company focused on delivering medical services to the most chronically ill patients. Boehler is also the founder of Avalon Health Solutions, a provider of laboratory benefit management services.

Earlier this year, Azar identified the value-based transformation of the entire healthcare system as one of the top four priorities for the department.

“Adam is the kind of results-oriented, transformational leader we need to deliver on what President Trump has promised the American people: better healthcare at a lower cost,” Azar said in a statement. “At CMMI, he has already demonstrated an ambition for bold change, and will now be able to bring his deep experience with private sector innovation to help HHS execute on the long-talked-about goal of transforming our healthcare system into one that pays for value.”

Boehler will continue to serve as director of CMMI, a department created under the Obama administration that is charged with piloting, testing and evaluating alternative payment models—such as bundled payment models, for example—with the intent of increasing quality and efficiency, while reducing program expenditures under Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

In a statement, Donald H. Crane, president and CEO, America’s Physician Groups, applauded the move. “As the former CEO and founder of Landmark Health, where he focused on providing care to some of the most complex and chronically ill patients, Adam has front-line experience in the very same innovative, value-based payment arrangements which we are trying to shift America’s physicians into.  Our members understand that coordinated care that is focused on population health management is the key to providing the high-quality, low cost treatments and services their patients want and deserve,” Crane said.

Aledade founder and former National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, M.D., also supported the hiring on Twitter.