Amol Navathe, MD, PhD
Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Health Policy and Medicine, Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, and the founding Director of The Parity Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Staff Physician at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. He is the immediate-past Vice Chair and Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), a non-partisan agency that advises the U.S. Congress on Medicare policy. He is also the founder of Otter Health and previously co-founded Embedded Healthcare (now Clarify Health), health care technology companies that use behavioral economics solutions to improve affordability and quality. His service includes membership on the boards of directors for the not-for-profit health plans Hawaii Medical Services Association and SCAN Health Plan.
As a practicing physician, health economist, and engineer, Dr. Navathe has extensive expertise in Medicare payment policy, physician and hospital economic behavior, and prospective policy trials in health care. He has applied this expertise to payment and delivery transformation, including applications of behavioral economics to clinician decision-making, as well as to federal policy for health care evidence development and data infrastructure. He completed his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and his postgraduate medical training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. He obtained his PhD in Health Care Management and Economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Navathe is a leading scholar on payment model design and evaluation, particularly bundled payments. His scholarship is distinguished by its bi-directional translation between basic scientific discovery and real-world practice, with a focus on: (1) the impact of value-based care and payment models, such as orthopedic bundles, on health care value; (2) the design of financial and non-financial incentives, including applications of behavioral economics, to drive clinician practice change; and (3) the use of both pragmatic clinical trials and observational data analyses.
A defining feature of Dr. Navathe’s work is his ability to address core organizational challenges using rigorous scientific methods—yielding direct impact on patient care while simultaneously advancing foundational understanding of how to design care and payment models. His scholarship targets the most pressing questions in care and payment model design, answers them with rigor in partnership with real-world organizations, and communicates findings with impact.
Dr. Navathe’s experience spans academia, the private sector, and government service. He has led large-scale government initiatives, including serving as Medical Officer and Senior Program Manager for the $1B federal Comparative Effectiveness Research program. He previously served as Managing Director of the Value Transformation practice at Navigant Consulting. His thought leadership contributed to the founding of the academic journal Health Care: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation. His work on health care cost and quality improvement has been published in numerous leading journals, including Science, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Health Affairs, Health Services Research, Healthcare, and others.
As a practicing physician, Dr. Navathe has an up-close view of the complexities of health care financing and the resulting hardships. For these reasons, he is dedicated to transforming health care delivery for his patients, who provide him with great inspiration. He hopes that his work will improve their lives and the lives of Americans nationwide.