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Experts
Laurie Coots Daras
Vice President
Contact
LaurieCoots@westat.comOverview
Laurie Coots Daras, PhD, is a Vice President for Behavioral Health and Health Policy. She leads technical work, serves in management, and leads business development and strategic planning activities. A quantitative researcher, she brings over 20 years of experience in health services research—specifically, in national quality and payment policy for postacute and long-term care.
Coots Daras supports a variety of projects for CMS and other agencies within HHS on topics such as nursing home quality, federal oversight of survey and certification activities, and post-acute care payment. She has experience using Medicare claims and other large datasets to measure hospitalizations and readmissions among Medicare beneficiaries for quality reporting and value-based purchasing programs. Her work has been published in Health Affairs, the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, INQUIRY, and other health services research journals.
Education
- PhD, Social Policy, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Predoctoral Training Fellowship
- MS, Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Dartmouth College
- BA, Human Geography and Sociology, Colgate University