Adam Elshaug

Dr. Adam Elshaug is an internationally recognized researcher and policy advisor specializing in the calculation of low-value care (prevalence and costs of) and reducing waste to optimize value in health care. He is Professor and Chair in Health Policy and Co-Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) at The University of Sydney, Australia. He is a Ministerial appointee to the (Australian) Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Taskforce. The taskforce is undertaking a 4+ year review process of Australia’s entire Medicare fee-for-service system utilising health technology assessment principles and processes. Dr. Elshaug also sits on the Board of Directors of the New South Wales Bureau of Health Information (BHI), an arms-length government agency that publically reports on the performance of all public hospitals. Until 2018 he was a member of the Choosing Wisely Australia advisory group, the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care’s Atlas of Healthcare Variation Advisory Group, is immediate past (elected) Member of the Executive Committee of the Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand (HSRAANZ). He is a PI within the Wiser Healthcare Collaborative and PI and a research lead of the Safety, Quality and Value stream of the recently awarded USD$100 million ‘Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre’ (DHCRC).

Dr. Elshaug was a 2010-11 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow based at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). From mid-2011 to mid-2013, he then served as NHMRC Sidney Sax Fellow in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy. In parallel, he became The Commonwealth Fund's Inaugural Visiting Fellow for 2012-13 in New York City. Dr. Elshaug’s expertise in optimizing value in health care involves: (i) defining low- versus high-value care from various stakeholder perspectives, such as patients, clinicians, community members, and policy makers, (ii) Measuring patient and provider level prevalence of low-value care within large healthcare datasets, and (iii) Working closely with national and state governments, and third party payers across the world to design and implement reforms aimed at reducing waste and optimizing heath care safety and value, including the design and evaluation of alternative care and payment models. His qualifications include: BA; BSc(Hons); MPH; PhD.