Carol Cronin

Carol Cronin has over twenty years experience working on health care and aging issues, with a particular interest in consumer health information and Medicare. Recently, Carol has started a non-profit organization: The Informed Patient Institute. Its mission is to improve the quality of health care by helping the public make more informed decisions about their care.

Since 2000, she has worked as a consultant and advisor to a number of non-profit organizations, foundations and government agencies. These include the California Endowment where she is evaluating cultural competence projects; AARP where she collected information on state performance report card efforts, advised on an online health navigation strategy and conducted an analysis of online personal health records; and the Delmarva Foundation and L & M Research where she facilitated a workgroup of national stakeholders to advise on hospital performance reporting, conducted research on the "state-of-the-art" of providing hospital performance information to patients and health professionals and advised on the design and presentation of the federal Hospital Compare website. Other clients have included the federal Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Atlantic Philanthropies, the Markle Foundation, the National Health Council, the Health Insurance Reform Project at George Washington University, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California HealthCare Foundation.

Previously, she was appointed as the first director of the Center for Beneficiary Services at the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA-now CMS) where she was responsible for planning, implementing and evaluating the National Medicare Education Program(NMEP) from 1998-2000. NMEP included the development and production of a Medicare handbook mailed to 39 million Medicare beneficiaries, a 1-800 call center, a website, and hundreds of community events around the country. Prior to HCFA, she was Senior Vice President for Health Pages, a New York City-based consumer health information website primarily made available through large employers. From 1984 - 1994, she worked in leadership positions in Washington D.C. for the employer-based Managed Health Care Association and the Washington Business Group on Health. She has Chaired and served on numerous Boards of Directors and technical, planning and advisory committees. She holds an A.B. degree from Smith College and two Masters degrees in Social Work and Gerontology from the University of Southern California.