Members

COGME Leadership

Erin P. Fraher, PhD, MPP, COGME Chair

Erin P. Fraher, PhD, MPP is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine. Dr. Fraher directs the HRSA-funded Carolina Health Workforce Research Center. The Center’s mission is to provide the evidence needed to redesign health workforce training, deployment, and regulation in a rapidly changing health care system. Dr. Fraher is internationally recognized for her efforts to improve workforce projection methodologies and investigate ways that states, and the federal government, can better use graduate medical education funding to drive workforce outcomes, foster transparency, and increase accountability. Her recent work focuses on understanding the workforce implications of new care delivery and payment models. Dr. Fraher’s research is interprofessional, spanning medicine, nursing, social work, pharmacy, dentistry, mental health, allied health, and the direct care workforce. She is Chair of the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME), which is charged with advising the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Congress on workforce trends, training issues, and financing. While Dr. Fraher has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, her ability to produce policy briefs, fact sheets, and interactive data visualizations has enabled her work to have broad impact. She has a BA in Economics/Spanish from Wellesley College, a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD in Health Policy and Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Thomas C. Tsai, MD, MPH, COGME Vice Chair

Dr. Tsai is a surgeon and Director of Clinical Care Redesign in the Department of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research has focused on using large national datasets to understand variations in the cost, quality, and equity of health care delivered in the United States. His research is focused on the role of alternative payment models in improving health care delivery; the effect of mergers and health systems expansion on access and outcomes; and drivers of disparities in U.S. medical and surgical outcomes.

Appointed Members

The legislation dictates that the Council consist of 18 members.

The Secretary of HHS appoints 14 of these members. This includes representatives of:

• Practicing primary care physicians
• National and specialty physician organizations
• Foreign medical graduates
• Medical student and house staff associations
• Schools of medicine and schools of osteopathic medicine
• Public and private teaching hospitals
• Health insurers
• Business
• Labor

Federal Representatives

The authorizing legislation dictates that the Council include the following four federal representatives or their designees:

• Assistant Secretary for Health, HHS
• Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, HHS
• Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration
• Chief Medical Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs

Member Roster

Council Members (PDF - 152 KB)