Mark A. Zezza, Ph.D., joined the Fund in January 2011 as Senior Policy Analyst, Health Care Delivery Policy. In this role, Dr. Zezza works closely with Stuart Guterman, vice president for Payment and System Reform and executive director of the Fund's Commission on a High Performance Health System. He has several key responsibilities, including: writing policy analysis reports related to health care payment and delivery system reform for the Commonwealth Fund and the Commission on a High Performance Health System; collaborating with other Fund staff on topics related to those issues; and helping to develop grants to support research on payment and delivery system reform. He also supports the Fund's efforts to provide key members of Congress and the Administration with timely information.

Dr. Zezza joins the Fund from the Engelberg Center for Health Reform at the Brookings Institution, where he was a research director responsible for provider payment and delivery system reform projects. At Brookings, he wrote publications and managed projects evaluating and providing implementation support to health reform initiatives on accountability payment models, health IT, and quality measurements for pilot sites. He has been the lead analyst on the Fund grant, Medicare and Accountability-Based Payment Reform: Learning From Development and Implementation of the Medicare Health Care Quality Demonstration.

Prior to joining Brookings, Dr. Zezza was associate director in the State, Provider and Payer Practice at the Lewin Group, working as a member of the State Healthcare Reform team to analyze the economic and coverage effects of reform proposals. He also conducted analyses on the impact of Medicare payment policy, using large databases for econometric analyses. From July 1999 through 2006, Dr. Zezza worked in the Office of the Actuary, the Center for Medicare Management, and the Center for Beneficiary Choices at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Baltimore. He holds a B.S. in Math and Psychology from Dickinson College, an M.A. in Economic Policy Analysis from the University of Maryland, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the same institution.