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Value Incentives & Systems Action Collaborative

Financial incentives that drive accountability for population health

About the Value Incentives & Systems Action Collaborative

As one of four action collaboratives under the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium, the Value Incentives & Systems Action Collaborative (VISAC) seeks to identify financial incentives that drive individual and community health and well-being.

Despite the high rate of spending on health in the U.S., health outcomes lag behind other industrialized nations. To address this persistent gap between spending and value, the VISAC works with government leaders, industry executives, clinicians, and other critical stakeholders —to identify payment methods that are aligned with shared expectations for health system performance. The VISAC aims to move the U.S. toward a health system that is affordable, efficient, and accessible to everyone.

Co-Chairs

UPMC Health Plan

Diane P. Holder is executive vice president and president of the UPMC Insurance Services Division, and president and CEO of UPMC Health Plan. UPMC is one of the nation’s leading integrated delivery systems and through its health plans and affiliates, provides health coverage and benefit management for 3.4 million men, women and children in Pennsylvania. The Insurance Services Division includes the UPMC Health Plan, UPMC for You, Community Care Behavioral Health Organization and Work Partners. These health benefits companies manage benefits for Commercial, Medicaid, Medicare, Behavioral Health, EAP, Health Promotions and Worker’s Compensation programs.

Ms. Holder has held a number of leadership positions in health care including the CEO of UPMC’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and the founding CEO of Community Care Behavioral Health Organization. Ms Holder is a faculty member of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry and a faculty member of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her master’s degree from Columbia University.

American Medical Association

James L. Madara, MD, serves as the CEO and executive vice president of the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest physician organization. He holds the academic title of adjunct professor of pathology at Northwestern University.

Since taking the reins of the AMA in 2011, Dr. Madara has helped sculpt the organization’s visionary longterm strategic plan. As an extension of this vision, he now also serves as chairman of Health2047 Inc., an independent, design-driven innovation firm based in San Francisco and whose mission is to help advance the AMA’s goal of improving the health of the nation.

Prior to arriving at the AMA, Dr. Madara spent the first 22 years of his career at Harvard Medical School, receiving both clinical and research training, serving as a tenured professor and as director of the NIH-sponsored Harvard Digestive Diseases Center. Following five years as chair of pathology at Emory, Dr. Madara served as dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospitals at the University of Chicago, bringing together the university’s biomedical research, teaching and clinical activities. While there he oversaw the renewal of the institution’s biomedical campus and engineered significant new affiliations with community hospitals, teaching hospital systems, community clinics and national research organizations.

Dr. Madara also served as senior advisor with Leavitt Partners, an innovative health care consulting and private-equity firm founded by former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt.

Having published more than 200 original papers and chapters, Dr. Madara has received both national and international awards, and served as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Pathology and as president of the American Board of Pathology.

In addition to Modern Healthcare consistently naming him as one of the nation’s 50 most influential physician executives, as well as one of the nation’s 100 most influential people in health care, he is a past recipient of a prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health. He received the 2011 Davenport Award for lifetime achievement
in gastrointestinal disease from the American Physiological Society and the 2011 Mentoring Award for lifetime achievement from the American Gastroenterological Society.

Dr. Madara is an elected member of both the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He also cochairs the Value Incentives and Systems Innovation Collaborative of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and is a member of NAM’s Leadership Consortium for Value & Science-Driven Health Care.