Dr. Cohen is the Director of the Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends (CFACT) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He directs a staff of health economists, social scientists, statisticians, clinicians, and support staff who conduct and support research on issues related to healthcare access, costs, and quality of care, and provide technical assistance to policymakers and analysts both within and outside the Federal government. He is also responsible for the production and dissemination of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), a nationally representative survey of health care use, expenditures, and insurance coverage in the U.S., and the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), which comprises the nations’ largest collection of longitudinal hospital care data. Both databases are widely used by policymakers and researchers in analyses of the U.S. healthcare system.
Dr. Cohen has conducted research on a variety of health care issues. His publications include studies of enrollment in Medicaid and the SCHIP program, the impact of reimbursement levels on utilization patterns for physician services and nursing home quality under Medicaid, methods of predicting individuals likely to be high cost, and the impact of obesity on health care expenditures. Dr. Cohen has been at the Agency since 1989. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in policy research from the University of Chicago.