Susannah M. Bernheim, MD, MHS

Vice President, Program and Strategy

Susannah Bernheim, MD, is vice president, program and strategy at The John A. Hartford Foundation, where she provides strategic leadership for the foundation’s grantmaking and programs. She oversees the foundation’s program strategy, working with the president, program staff and grantees to develop and implement national initiatives that improve care for older adults. Dr. Bernheim is also an adjunct associate professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

Dr. Bernheim brings nationally recognized leadership at the intersection of health care quality, policy, research and care delivery. She is a family physician and previously served as the chief medical officer for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where she provided strategic and clinical guidance in the development of new payment and care delivery models for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. She led the Center’s quality strategy and evidence-based prevention strategy. She previously served as the CMS Innovation Center’s chief quality officer.

Prior to joining CMS, Dr. Bernheim was senior director of quality measurement at the Yale-New Haven Hospital Centers for Outcomes Research and Evaluation and an associate professor at Yale University School of Medicine in general internal medicine. She previously served as deputy director for performance management for Yale New Haven Health System.

She completed her undergraduate degree at Yale University and her medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). After postgraduate training in family medicine at UCSF, Dr. Bernheim was a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the Training Program in Geriatric Clinical Epidemiology and Aging-Related Research at Yale University.