Scholarship and Biography
Christopher Tompkins, Ph.D. has pioneered payment and incentive systems for healthcare reform for since the 1980’s. He was a member of the research team that first developed diagnosis-based risk-adjustment models for Medicare. In the 1990’s, he led the research team that pioneered development of the Medicare shared savings payment model, and the blueprint for the Physician Group Practice demonstration, which became the basis for today’s Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).
In the 2000’s, he led the design of Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP), and later led the analytic support for implementation of HVBP. He directed the development of the Episode Grouper for Medicare (EGM) for CMMI as the basis for individual feedback to physicians, and Medicare physician value-based payment. Dr. Tompkins is leading support for design innovation and empirical modeling of policy options for CMS/CCSQ regarding the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS); and development of an APM with the American College of Surgeons, along with a number of surgical specialties, that is based on an episode framework for cost and quality.
Dr. Tompkins led analytic support for about 100 hospitals considering participation in the Medicare Bundled Payment for Care Improvement demonstration. Also, he directed support of the Office of the National Coordinator’s Beacon Communities in relation to claims-based performance measures based on Medicare data. He also led development of prototypical bundled payment options for behavioral health in Medicaid.
Dr. Tompkins has led many applied research studies, including RCTs and quasi-experimental evaluations, and has taught program evaluation, healthcare financing, and research methods. He chaired the Brandeis University IRB and HIPAA Privacy Board for eight years.
Dr. Tompkins co-authored the NQF report (2014) on linking quality and cost measures for evaluating healthcare efficiency and value. He has led the development of NQF-endorsed performance measures related to care transitions, as well as the prototype Medicare Spending per Beneficiary measure now implemented in Medicare HVBP.