Mary Barton, MD, MPP

Mary Barton, MD MPP is Vice President for Performance Measurement at NCQA. NCQA’s Performance Measurement department is primarily responsible for creating and refining quality measures in partnership with various stakeholders. Dr. Barton oversees the team supporting new quality measure development and the upkeep of existing measures in the HEDIS measure set. She provides direction related to evaluation of health care including performance measure development, application and maintenance of measures, methodological issues related to measurement and interpretation of performance data.

Dr. Barton also leads selected grants and contracts that focus on NCQA’s strength as a measure developer and an experienced evaluator of health care. She is a member of NCQA’s Leadership Team. Dr. Barton coordinates the functioning of the NCQA’s Committee on Performance Measurement, representing the company in communication with stakeholders including the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, physician professional societies, and leaders of health plans, insurance companies and consumer groups.

Prior to coming to NCQA, Dr. Barton was for over five years Scientific Director of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) where she oversaw the scientific support of recommendation making by that expert panel, and directed communications with governmental peers and professional groups about this work.   Dr. Barton trained in primary care internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and completed a general medicine research fellowship at Harvard. Prior to joining AHRQ, she was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, where she performed clinical epidemiology and health services research related to cancer screening and prevention in terms of access, test performance, and outcomes.  She is a member of the American College of Physicians and the Society of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Barton received her MD from Harvard University and a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.