Hugh

Waters

,

PhD

Hugh Waters is a health economist and specialist in health financing and economic evaluation. He has more than 20 years of experience working with public health programs, both nationally and internationally. His areas of expertise are (1) health insurance and health financing reforms; (2) economic evaluation of public health initiatives, including tobacco control policies and programs. He speaks French and Spanish fluently and has worked in more than 30 countries.

Dr. Waters has strong skills in the economic evaluation of health care interventions; and modeling health care utilization, access, and efficiency and quality improvements. He has successfully applied Activity-Based Costing (ABC) to a variety of health care settings. He has published more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including international comparisons of quality-based health care purchasing arrangements.

He was the lead investigator of an economic analysis of the Keystone Quality Improvement program in Michigan, focusing on the economic implications of a patient safety program to reduce nosocomial infections in intensive care settings. He has also worked closely with the Maryland State Medicaid Program to develop simulation models to calculate the cost, coverage, and health service utilization options for expanding health insurance coverage through Medicaid and private insurance. The findings of his study have been used to shape health insurance expansion policies for the state.