Biography
Susan Xu is an expert on payment policy with 10+ years of experience in analyzing a wide range of Medicare payment systems, including inpatient, outpatient, and physician payment systems, pay for performance programs, and alternative payment models. At the Association of American Medical Colleges, she helps large academic medical centers better understand the changing reimbursement environment and the financial impact on their operation. She also collaborates with peer organizations and interfaces with government agencies to address various policy issues. Her policy experience also includes advising diverse health industry stakeholders about their policy, reimbursement, and regulation concerns at a health policy consulting firm and working on Medicaid payment issues at a state hospital association. Before launching her career into health policy, she worked in the field of biomedical engineering as a research scientist and also as a magazine journalist.
Reimbursement of diagnostic tests are a core component of Precision Medicine. Convincing payers of the medical necessity of a new diagnostic test can be challenging. Timely access for patients with the most compelling unmet needs requires the reimbursement environment transition to a transparent value-based model using fit-for-purpose levels of evidence.