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7 Models for Institutionalizing Experimentation in U.S. Federal Agencies
Pages 63-68

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From page 63...
... That requires an infrastructure to conduct experiments and to scale interventions that work, which in turn requires thinking carefully about such issues as:  fashioning responsive hiring and promotion models,  creating buy-in among the rank and file of an organization,  communicating findings to the public,  integrating individuals with specialized skill sets into the design of experiments,  soliciting and prioritizing the types of questions to be investigated,  securing funding streams and institutional autonomy to keep experiments going, and  scaling experiments over time. "The correct model for institutionalizing experimentation is going to vary depending on the specific organization, its characteristics, its congressional mandate, the budget, and the talent structure that they have," Watney said.
From page 64...
... In response to a question, Rater addressed the issue of how the bargaining unit representing patent examiners tends to interact with researchers. Negotiations between the bargaining unit and researchers may change the conditions under which a hypothesis is tested or the implementation of a new idea, he said.
From page 65...
... CMS represents the two largest U.S. health care payers -- Medicaid, at over $1 trillion of annual expenditures, and Medicare, at almost $1 trillion -- "collectively, more than what the Defense Department spends in a year," Pham said.
From page 66...
... Pham's job was in part to act as a bridge between the researchers and the administrators: for example, she had a slide deck entitled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Evaluation." The experiments also had such massive effects in the health care marketplace that constructing control groups was difficult. "When practically every major health care organization in the land has signed some kind of value-based payment contract, what exactly is nonintervention in that context?
From page 67...
... "We were going to codesign this model with them, and many elements of that first payment model reflected things that we heard in direct conversation with health care providers as well as private payers." This can result in "pretty frank feedback," but it is better to hear from program participants directly than through the press. The one lacking element, she added, is a good way to involve the beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid in experimentation.
From page 68...
... Yet CMS has the largest investment for policy experimentation across the federal government outside of the Department of Defense. Pham noted, "That says something about what could be possible."


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