Jessica Nysenbaum

Jessica Nysenbaum’s work focuses on strategic decision making in policy and program operations for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, including about managed care, social determinants of health, and data and analytics.

Nysenbaum currently directs a technical assistance project for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that seeks to strengthen federal and state oversight of payment strategies for Medicaid managed care programs. The project focuses on risk-mitigation strategies such as risk corridors and risk pools, medical-loss ratios, and state-directed payments. Mathematica supports CMS with data and policy analysis to determine state compliance with federal regulations, to assess trends in and impacts on the use of these mechanisms, and to inform future policymaking. Nysenbaum’s prior work in managed care includes extensive work with CMS and states on improving Medicaid managed care encounter data, a re-design of CMS’s Medicaid managed care enrollment report, and support for the launch of dual financial alignment demonstrations.

Before joining Mathematica, Nysenbaum was a senior manager at Manatt Health. At Manatt, she worked on design and implementation of North Carolina’s Healthy Opportunities (social determinants of health) Pilots, conducted Medicaid analytics projects for life sciences companies, and developed return-on-investment calculators for early childhood development programs. She holds an M.P.P. from Georgetown University.