Keynote by Niall Brennan, Director for the Policy and Data Analysis Group, Center for Strategic Planning at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Niall Brennan

Center for Strategic Planning, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Niall Brennan is the Director in the Policy and Data Analysis Group in the Center for Strategic Planning at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services where he oversees a range of activities related to the overall strategic goals of the agency. The office performs a variety of analyses on high profile issues on a quick turnaround basis, to the CMS administrator, senior leaders and other HHS department leaders.

Prior to joining CMS, Brennan directed the Characterizing Episodes and Costs of Care (C3) project, a joint Brookings Institution/American Board of Medical Specialties initiative to develop a starter set of fully transparent, episode-based cost-of-care measures that is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, conducted research related to comparisons of quality between the Medicare fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage programs and managed the activities of the workgroups of the Quality Alliance Steering Committee (QASC). Prior to joining Brookings, Brennan was a Senior Analyst at the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission where he directed studies on measuring physician quality and cost and the Medicare Advantage program. He was previously a principal analyst in the Budget Analysis Division at the Congressional Budget Office, where he worked on estimates related to Medicare reform, the Medicare drug benefit, and the Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system. Previously, Brennan worked as a research associate at The Urban Institute, where he focused on issues relating to health insurance coverage, Medicaid managed care, and safety net hospitals, and as a consultant in the Health Economics Group at Price Waterhouse.

He is a graduate of University College Dublin, and earned a master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University.