M. Susan Ridgely

Biography

M. Susan Ridgely is a senior policy analyst at RAND Corporation, a non-profit research institution in Santa Monica, California. Ms. Ridgely holds graduate degrees in law and community organization and has over 20 years of experience in health services research and policy analysis. Her current research activities include projects on innovation in health care financing, patient safety, medical liability, and health information technology. Currently she is Principal Investigator for two evaluations of bundled health care payment - the evaluation of Prometheus Payment, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the IHA Bundled Episode Payment and Gainsharing Demonstration, which is evaluating the comparative clinical and economic effectiveness of episode-based payment for physicians and hospitals in California. Both projects involve analysis of how health plans and health care providers adapt to changes in health care reimbursement. She is also the RAND Principal Investigator for the multi-site evaluation of the HHS Patient Safety and Medical Liability Demonstration Program under contract to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. For these and other projects, Ms. Ridgely employs site visit, interview and survey methodologies to understand changes in the organization and financing of health care, to derive “lessons learned,” and to communicate those lessons to policymakers. She specializes in the use of qualitative methods in large, multi-site evaluations. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research and has co-authored 75 articles, monographs, and book chapters in the health and behavioral health fields.