Robert Saunders, PhD, is Research Director, Payment and Delivery Reform at Duke-Margolis. In this role, he directs a portfolio of payment and delivery reform initiatives, with projects on topics like ACOs, integrated pain management, alternative payment models for specialty care, improving serious illness care, and translating evidence to policy-relevant options. Prior to joining Duke-Margolis, Dr. Saunders was a Senior Director and then Senior Advisor to the President of the National Quality Forum, where he managed a large federally-funded project on quality measures for federal programs and directed special projects on data, payment reform, systems engineering, and the future of health care quality measurement. He was previously Senior Program Officer at the Institute of Medicine and managed health care legislative affairs for Representative Rush D. Holt. He has a PhD in physics from Duke University, where he focused on improving medical imaging for early stage cancer diagnosis, and an undergraduate degree from William and Mary.
