Doug Jacobs, MD, MPH

Dr. Jacobs is the Chief Transformation Officer in the Center for Medicare at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In this role, he helps to lead center-wide efforts to move the health care system towards value-based care, advance health equity, and promote delivery system transformation. Medicare is the nation’s largest payer, responsible for more than 1 in 5 health care dollars spent in the US and responsible for covering more than 63 million Americans. Prior to this role, he was the Chief Medical Officer and first Chief Innovation Officer for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS), where he helped oversee the state’s Medicaid program. Dr. Jacobs is a board-certified Internal Medicine Physician and has continued seeing patients throughout the pandemic.

Dr. Jacobs was chosen by Governor Tom Wolf to help lead the Whole-Person Health Reform package in Pennsylvania. Under his leadership, the Department of Human Services created Pennsylvania’s first equity incentive program in Medicaid and also led the creation of a new program to incorporate community-based organizations to address the social determinants of health. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, he helped lead the Department’s response to the pandemic. He helped start a successful program that paired academic medical centers with long-term care facilities that was funded for $175 million by the state legislature. When the first COVID-19 vaccinations were approved under emergency use authorization, he helped lead the phased roll-out of vaccine distribution and implementation of vaccination programs for the most underserved Pennsylvanians.

Dr. Jacobs has written and published articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal for Public Health, Health Affairs Blog, Washington Post, and New York Times. His most widely-cited academic work is a study that identified ways insurance companies were systematically discriminating against patients with chronic conditions, coining the term “adverse tiering” to describe their practice of taking all drugs to treat certain conditions like HIV and making them prohibitively expensive. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and with distinction from UCSF’s School of Medicine. He has worked in several health policy offices in government, including ASPE at HHS, the National Academy of Medicine, and the Senate HELP Committee. He was previously selected as one of Forbes 30 under 30 in Healthcare.