Our Professional Staff
Allen Dobson, Ph.D.
Al.dobson@dobsondavanzo.com
(703) 260-1762
Allen Dobson, Ph.D., is a health economist and President of Dobson | DaVanzo. Before he co-founded the firm, Dr. Dobson spent eighteen years with The Lewin Group where he was Senior Vice President and directed the Health Care Finance Group. Prior to work at The Lewin Group, Dr. Dobson served as Director in the Office of Research at CMS (then the Health Care Financing Administration) when the Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (PPS) was being developed and implemented. Dr. Dobson has studied Medicare’s various PPSs (e.g., acute care hospitals, long term care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, home health agencies, and ambulatory surgery centers) for over twenty five years and has directed numerous efforts to model the impact of Medicare and Medicaid payment policies on health care providers using a variety of statistical and econometric methodologies. He has extensively analyzed Medicare Resource Based Relative Value System (RBRVS) physician payment and worked for ten years for CMS advising on the methodology for determining physician practice expenses under RBRVS. Additionally, he regularly leads efforts to model CMS rulemaking analyses for numerous provider groups in support of the clients’ public comments and responses to the notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). All of Dr. Dobson’s work is grounded in the use of complex data systems and validated methodology.
Dr. Dobson recently led two projects for the National Association for Home Care and & Hospice (NAHC). For one project, Dr. Dobson led an analysis of Medicare home health care industry projected gains and losses under the Presidents FY 2010 proposed budget. In a second study, Dr. Dobson developed a CBO-style score for several NAHC legislative proposals. Both of these projects used data from the Medicare Home Health Cost Reports.
Dr. Dobson is currently the Principal Investigator of two large research projects which each use a multiyear, patient-level, 20 percent sample of Medicare claims across facility-based settings. The first is a project for a consortium of long term care hospitals to determine how they impact Medicare post-acute care expenditures after adjusting for "selection effects." The second project is for a consortium of inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) to explore various ways of bundling Medicare payment for episodes of care that include inpatient hospital and other post acute care settings. Both studies involve the linking of Medicare claims across care settings for large cohorts of patients.
Recently Dr. Dobson led a study for America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) on the effect of a "public plan" on hospital margins using California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) data. This study was published in Health Affairs this past fall.1
During the past year, Dr. Dobson led two studies of the economic impact of an industry. The first study modeled the impact of the nursing home industry in Pennsylvania, The other study looked at clinical and economic impact of community health centers in the State of Washington.2,3 These two studies used input-output applied economic modeling to determine the direct, indirect, and induced effects, as well as the multipliers of the target institutions on their state economies. The study in Washington was the first to model economic impact at the county level for community health centers.
Dr. Dobson was selected as one of the nation's most influential health care policy leaders by Faulkner and Gray, when they included him in their first edition of "The Health Care 500." He received the Helen L. Van Seawall Best Article Award from the Healthcare Financial Management Association for his article "Shifting - No Solution to Problem of Increasing Cost."
Dr. Dobson is a frequent speaker at conferences and has testified before the U.S. Congress, MedPAC, and various state, federal, and presidential commissions on health care finance, provider payment, and health policy issues. Over the last several years, he testified before the Pennsylvania, Illinois, Mississippi, Maine, and Nevada state legislatures on a variety of health care finance issues. He has published his work widely, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Inquiry, Journal of Managed Care, Health Affairs, and Health Care Financing Review. Dr. Dobson is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of Washington in Seattle, and earned his Ph.D. in economics from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
1Dobson A, DaVanzo JE, El-Gamil A, Berger G. (2009). How a new ‘public plan’ could affect hospitals’ finances and private insurance premiums. Health Affairs – Web Exclusive: w1013-w1024.
2Dobson A, DaVanzo JE, Heath S, El-Gamil AM. Nursing Care Facilities: Economic Impact on Pennsylvania. Submitted to the Pennsylvania Health Care Association, March, 2009.
3Dobson A, McMahon P, Heath S, DaVanzo JE. The Economic and Clinical Impact of Community Health Centers in Washington State: Analyses of the Contributions to Public Health and Economic Implications and Benefits for the State and Counties. Report Submitted to: Community Health Network of Washington and Washington Association of Community and Migrant Health Centers, December, 2008.