Jessica Ross

Jessica Ross’s work focuses on evaluation and improvement of Medicaid long-term services and supports (LTSS) systems. Her expertise includes quantitative and qualitative analyses, quality measure development and testing, and program evaluation.

Ross currently directs the second national evaluation of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS’s) Money Follows the Person Demonstration (MFP). For this project, Ross and her team will design and conduct an evaluation of the MFP program’s impact, identify best practices, and develop new digital tools to facilitate ongoing monitoring by CMS and states. They will also examine nursing facility discharges during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) and develop tools to help states and CMS ensure successful community discharges during future PHEs.

Ross also leads a project to develop and implement a quality assurance and performance improvement system for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Transitions to Community Living. The initial phase of the project focused on (1) identifying measures needed to provide a comprehensive picture of program performance and (2) developing the foundation for centralized data management, analysis, and data visualization through a dashboard. In the current phase, Ross and her team will implement and use these tools to conduct ongoing quality assurance and performance improvement in conjunction with the state. She and the Mathematica team are also providing support to implement North Carolina’s Olmstead Plan, including performance monitoring, and development of a data analytics system and dashboards.

In her prior work at Mathematica, Ross led the development of several annual reports on Section 1915(c) waiver program participation and expenditures nationally, by state, and across various populations of Medicaid beneficiaries using LTSS. On behalf of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, she also explored how value-based purchasing could promote new models of care, services, and reimbursement structures for people with disabilities served by fee-for-service waivers for home and community-based services. In addition, Ross served as project director for a multiyear effort to develop new quality measures for various groups of Medicaid beneficiaries, and she led the development of the first nationally standardized measures for managed LTSS plans, many of which were adopted as part of CMS’ first HCBS Quality Measure Set.

Before joining Mathematica in 2010, Ross held research positions at a number of institutions, including RTI International, the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, the University of Cape Town, and the New York University Medical School. She holds an M.P.H. in epidemiology/global health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.