PHILADELPHIA -- Mary Naylor of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing has been appointed to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

Naylor is a professor of gerontology and director of the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health.     

MedPAC was established by Congress in 1997 to analyze access to care, cost and quality of care and other issues affecting Medicare.  MedPAC advises Congress on payments to health plans participating in the Medicare Advantage program and providers in Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service programs.

Since 1989, Naylor has led an interdisciplinary program of research designed to improve quality of care, decrease unnecessary hospitalizations and reduce health-care costs for vulnerable community-based elders.

She is also the national program director for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program, the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, aimed at generating, disseminating and translating research to understand how nurses contribute to quality patient care.  She co-chaired the National Quality Forum’s Steering Committee on Nursing Care Performance Measures.

Naylor is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine.  

She received her Ph.D. from Penn and her B.S. in nursing from Villanova University.

The appointment was announced by Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office.