John O’Brien is director of acute care policy studies at the Center. In this capacity, he manages the Center’s work in Medicaid managed care policy, financing and evaluation, health plan performance assessment, and encounter data collection and analysis. Mr. O’Brien directs the Center’s ongoing analysis and assessment of HealthChoice, Maryland’s Medicaid managed care program. He managed the HealthChoice evaluation and co-authored an article on evaluation findings in The Milbank Quarterly.
Prior to joining the Center he was a Senior Associate at Health Systems Research Inc. He was based at the Ministry of Health where he worked on a project titled Comparing Health Care Performance Measurement in the US and New Zealand: Do we ask the same questions, and what influences the answers?
O’Brien studied New Zealand’s methods for assessing healthcare system performance and contact them with similar efforts by state Medicaid programs in the U.S. The focus of his research will be specific elements of each country’s healthcare delivery system: Primary Health Organisations (PHOs) in New Zealand, and Medicaid Managed Care Organisations (MCOs) in the U.S.