Patrick Conway, M.D., will leave his post as deputy administrator for innovation and quality at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). In October Conway will become president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.
Conway currently serves as the most senior, non-political executive at CMS. He has been one of the driving forces behind the national movement to value-based care, with healthcare payments tied to quality and innovation.
At the CMS Innovation Center, he has been responsible for overseeing the testing of numerous new payment and service delivery models that reward quality and value. Models include accountable care organizations, bundled payments, primary care medical homes, state innovation models, and many more. These models involve millions of people and hundreds of thousands of providers across the nation. Successful models can be scaled nationally. The CMS Innovation Center budget is $10 billion over 10 years.
He joined CMS in 2011 as the agency’s chief medical officer. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2014. Conway is a practicing pediatric hospitalist and was selected as a Master of Hospital Medicine from the Society of Hospital Medicine.
Prior to joining CMS, Conway oversaw clinical operations and research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as director of hospital medicine, with a focus on improving patient outcomes across the entire health system. He also served at McKinsey & Co. as a private-sector consultant for healthcare clients early in his career.
“Blue Cross NC’s role in transforming the health care system in North Carolina is a model that other plans aspire to and that I want to work with the Blue Cross NC team to further improve,” said Conway in a prepared statement. “I look forward to collaborating with Blue Cross NC employees, health care providers and employers to deliver the best health outcomes and best service experience at the lowest cost for our customers.”
