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Penny Mohr, MA, is the Director of the Division of Research on Health Plans and Drugs within the Office of Research, Development, and Information at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The division is responsible for conducting research and oversight of demonstration evaluations pertaining to the Medicare prescription drug benefit, Medicare managed care, and the end-stage renal disease program. In addition to her management responsibilities, Ms. Mohr serves as a technical authority within the Agency on issues pertaining to the adoption, diffusion, and cost-effectiveness of health care technology in the Medicare program. She is a member of CMS’ Council for Technology and Innovation, charged with coordinating coverage, coding and payment processes for new medical technologies, as well as promoting the exchange of information on new technologies between CMS and other entities. She holds advisory board positions on the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases’ US Renal Data System, the American Journal of Managed Care, and Tufts-New England Medical Centers’ Center for Value and Risk in Health Care, and serves on the Steering Committee for Academy Health’s economic interest group.
She has been a member of ISPOR for eight years, and is the Issues Panel Review Committee Co-chair for the upcoming ISPOR 13th Annual International Meeting in Toronto, Canada. Prior to joining CMS, she was a Senior Research Director at Project HOPE’s Center for Health Affairs, and outcomes research manager at MedSTAT, where she pursued longstanding interests in medical technology policy and cost-effectiveness research. She has published widely on a variety of health services research topics. Pertinent to this society, Ms. Mohr has extensive international experience, having worked in more than a dozen countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, and Eastern Europe. Ms. Mohr received a Master's degree at the University of Sussex, England where she studied economics.
The rapid growth of ISPOR’s membership is testament to the central place it has assumed among pharmacoeconomics and outcomes researchers, and I am honored to have been nominated to serve on its Board of Directors. Since ISPOR’s inception, I have seen continual improvement in the scientific rigor of articles published in its journal, Value in Health, and the caliber of presentations and keynote addresses at its meetings. ISPOR has also been successful in helping to enhance the scientific methods underpinning outcomes research, and educating its membership about cutting-edge techniques to measure the comparative value of medical technology. I would like to see continuing improvement in these areas, particularly in the quality of the peer review process for its scientific meetings, which is essential for its credibility.
ISPOR has not performed as well in reaching out to decision and policy-makers, although this is part of the organization’s long-term vision. Users of outcomes research, including physicians, managed care representatives, and government decision-makers still represent only five percent of total membership. If the ISPOR membership were to elect me to the Board, my key focus would be to expand ISPOR’s global reach among decision and policy-makers. I would encourage the Society to increase its efforts to engage in meaningful dialog between industry, researchers, and decision-makers, enhance the ways in which research can be translated into practice, and become an essential reference for policy-makers interested in comparative effectiveness research. My previous involvement in organizations such as the International Society for Technology Assessment in Health Care, which attracted a high proportion of public policy-makers, past experience conducting outcomes research for private industry, and current position working within the federal government afford me unique perspectives that can help ISPOR bridge the communication gap between research and policies relating to medical technology.
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