Meena Seshamani

Meena Seshamani, MD, PhD most recently led the Medicare program at the US Department of Health and Human Services. She is an accomplished, strategic leader with a deep understanding of health care policy and operations, and a heart-felt commitment to outstanding patient care. Her diverse background as a health care executive, health economist, physician and health policy expert has given her a unique perspective on how health care policy and operations impact the real lives of patients. As Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Seshamani led her nearly 1,000 person team through historic transformation to further the agency’s goals to address health care disparities, expand access to coverage and care, drive innovation for high-quality, whole-person care, and promote affordability and sustainability of the Medicare program for generations to come. She has driven bold initiatives including transforming the Physician Fee Schedule to pay for more holistic care including community health services, care navigation, caregiver training, and behavioral health that is integrated with primary care; streamlined prior authorization in Medicare Advantage (MA) and rejected more than 1500 misleading TV ads to ensure that MA serves its 33 million enrollees; and stood up the historic Medicare Drug Price Negotiation program, which in its first year successfully negotiated the first 10 high cost drugs with an estimated savings of $6 billion.

Dr. Seshamani is a Hopkins-trained surgeon and Oxford-trained PhD economist, where she was a Marshall Scholar. Prior to joining CMS, she served as Vice President of Clinical Care Transformation at MedStar Health, where she conceptualized, designed and implemented population health initiatives and served on the senior leadership of the 10 hospital, 300+ outpatient care site health system. Her work to rapidly scale senior services, palliative care and community health initiatives as part of leading the health system’s COVID-19 efforts was nationally recognized. She also cared for patients as a head and neck surgeon at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco. Her work is routinely published in journals including New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and Health Affairs, and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Politico, Stat News, and most major TV news networks.