Dr. Pawlson has held senior positions in academic medicine, public policy/governmental organizations and the payer community. He currently is a Senior Medical Consultant for Saxton Stump and SE Healthcare Quality Consulting focusing on patient safety and quality improvement. He is also a Hudson Institute certified executive and life coach and a clinical professor with the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and adjunct professor the School of Nursing at George Washington University. Previously he served as Executive Director for Quality Innovation for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Washington DC, for two years and prior to that Executive Vice President of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), for over a decade. While at NCQA, Dr. Pawlson led the development of NCQA research, quality measurement and related grant and contracting activities, and overseeing the ongoing development of the widely used HEDIS clinical performance measures. He also worked on the development of assessment and quality improvement programs for the Patient Centered Medical Homes and ACOs, and served as liaison for NCQA to physician groups, including the AMA-led Physician Consortium for Practice Improvement, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Earlier in his career, Dr. Pawlson was in Academic Medicine for nearly 25 years, serving as Senior Associate Vice President for Health Affairs and Medical Director for Quality and Utilization Management for the faculty practice at The George Washington University Medical Center, and prior to that as chairman of the University’s Department of Health Care Sciences (clinical primary care and public health) and director of the Institute for Health Policy, Outcomes and Human Values. During his time in academic medicine, he also served as a Robert Wood Johnson Policy Fellow on the staff of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and as a Fellow in the Center for the Study of Change in Academic Medicine at the American Association of Medical Colleges. While on the Senate Finance Committee staff he worked within the office of George Mitchell, D-Me, on bills related to Medicare expansion and drug benefit, nursing and medical workforce issues and on nursing home reform. Dr. Pawlson was also been active in organized medicine serving as President and Chairman of the Board of the American Geriatrics Society, and on the Boards of the Society of General Internal Medicine, the American College of Medical Quality, the American Board of Medical Quality, the Bon Secours Health System, the U.S. Soldiers and Airman’s Home and as Chair of the Advisory Group for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Innovations Exchange. He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles and numerous other publications. Dr. Pawlson is board certified in internal medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American Geriatrics Society, The Gerontological Society of America and the American College of Preventive Medicine. He received a B.A., cum laude, from The Pennsylvania State University, an M.D. with Distinction from the University of Pittsburgh, did his internship and residency at Stanford University and was an endocrine fellow and then Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and also obtained an M.P.H. in Community Medicine at the University of Washington.