Diane Bechel Marriott

Dr. Bechel Marriott received her doctorate in health policy in 1998 from the University of Michigan, as a Pew Charitable Trust Fellow. She now serves as Project Manager of the multi-payer, state-wide Michigan Primary Care Transformation Project (MiPCT), the nation’s largest patient-centered, advanced primary care practice demonstration project involving over a million patients, almost four hundred physician practices and seventeen hundred physicians. The project aims to produce care experience and quality improvements in a financially-sustainable manner. She also conducts applied policy and research activity on population health and patient-centered medical home models at the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation (CHRT).
 

Before coming to CHRT, Diane served at Ford Motor Company for fifteen years. As Ford’s Manager and Corporate Lead for Healthcare Strategy, Quality and Data, she designed benefit policies and programs, including Ford’s successful wellness and population health management program, which achieved an engagement rate of over 90% of salaried employees and retirees and produced a 2.5:1 return on investment. She also implemented Ford’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program, the 2008 salaried retiree transition to Health Reimbursement Arrangements, and led Ford’s Medicare Prescription Drug Subsidy program implementation which became a model for national employers.

She was selected as a Six Sigma Blackbelt at Ford Motor Company, and trained with the Six Sigma Academy, facilitating defect reduction and quality improvement in healthcare programs. She also managed pharmaceutical benefits and managed Community and Consumer Initiatives for Ford Motor Company. In this capacity, she directed the multi-region Hospital Profiling Project, a multi-employer/union project that provided over half a million consumers with hospital quality performance scores. She also ran regional projects with the UAW to improve the health of communities and the value of healthcare provided in those communities. She also served as National Director of Hospital Profiling, a joint Ford/General Motors/DaimlerChrysler/ American Hospital Association program to produce quality performance results for consumer decision-making. She served as the Senior Health Policy Advisor for Ford Motor Company and also coordinated Ford’s health policy efforts, including PPACA health reform planning, implementation and compliance, as well as data confidentiality and security policy, and projects to increase safety belt use, decrease workplace violence and decrease tobacco use.

She began her career in healthcare quality at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan in the Corporate Strategy and Quality Assurance areas in 1990. She held the position of Senior Policy Analyst at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan. In this capacity, she quantified the effects of the proposed Clinton Health Reform package on Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, and the State of Michigan, translated the implications into executive white papers, and presented findings to senior management. Early in her career, she also managed two urgent care centers for the Daughters of Charity’s first joint venture with physicians.
 

She has served on the National Advisory Committee for the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans (CAHPS) National Benchmarking Data Base, and the Steering Committee of the National Quality Forum (NQF) Purchaser Council as well as on their Hospital Measures Project Advisory Board. She is a member of the Board of Directors for KePRO, a regional quality improvement organization. Her applied research interests focus on retiree healthcare and increasing the usefulness and quality of consumer health care decision making information. She teaches a course on employer and purchaser influences on health care at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.