Melissa Cohen, JD, MPA, has spent the last 15 years as a senior leader in both government and the private sector leading teams responsible for the design and implementation of alternative payment models in the Medicare, Medicaid, and Commercial insurance programs to improve patient care. She started her career as an attorney for hospitals and health systems and learned early on how fragmented care and lack of access leads to poor patient outcomes. This led her to pursue a career in health care policy, strategy and operations and she has not looked back. Her areas of expertise include CMS regulatory and payment policy, value-based care model design, strategy and operations and provider network contracting.

From 2018-2021, Melissa was the Staff Vice President of Payment Innovation and Strategy at Anthem where she led value-based contracting including capitation and ACO models across all lines of business with a focus on provider enablement and alignment to product and benefit design. Melissa was one of the original staff of the CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), joining at its inception in 2011. While there, she drove the design and implementation of payment models across the care continuum including ACOs, Episode Based Payments, and Value Based Insurance Design. In her last year at CMMI, Melissa was responsible for management of the Center’s 10-billion-dollar budget and investment portfolio as well as policy and implementation of the Quality Payment Program (QPP) as the Group Director of the Policy and Programs Group. Melissa has a JD from Fordham University School of Law, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.