Susan Payne
Susan Payne, Ph.D., MPH, Principal Investigator, received her master's degree in public health from the University of Michigan and her doctoral degree in health policy from Boston University. The focus of Dr. Payne's recent work has been on the utilization, costs, and quality of health care services used by Medicaid members with chronic illness and/or disability. Dr. Payne has directed a number of studies on the quality of medical and mental health care provided to MaineCare members, sponsored by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. She is currently studying trends in Medicaid behavioral health care services use and costs and incentive payment systems to primary care practices to increase the quality of primary care. She is completing a statewide study of the appropriateness of medication use by older Medicaid beneficiaries, which included providing practice profiles on medication appropriateness to physicians and, with Ms. Tupper, the design, implementation, and evaluation of an intervention with prescribing physicians to improve medication appropriateness. She has directed policy studies, health services research studies, and program evaluations, and has received funding from AHRQ, the (Maine) Mental Health Funding Collaborative, and the Maine and Ohio Medicaid programs.
Dr. Payne has taught masters-level courses on the quality and outcomes of health care and the use of large health care data bases in health care research and a doctoral-level course on research methods. She was acting director of the Muskie School doctoral program in public policy and continues to be actively involved in the Program, chairing the Program's admissions and academic standing committee, and advising doctoral students.
Project Role
Dr. Payne will provide scientific and administrative direction for this project. She will manage project staff and consultants and be principally responsible for the infrastructure development components of the project. She will be responsible for providing leadership to the research project, participating in study design, data collection and analysis, and reporting of results. She will also be responsible for establishing the Center for Practice Improvement Research and serve as liaison with AHRQ and the CORE staff.
