Image
Meril Pothen

Meril was a Fall 2018 Zetema Fellow. She earned her Master of Public Policy degree from Duke, where she was a Margolis Scholar in Health Policy and Management, and her BS in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell.

Meril is a Senior Strategic Advisor at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. There, she specializes in developing alternative payment models and clinical pathways for specialty care. Her policy interests include high-value health care reform, value-based insurance design, and insurance financing to address social drivers of health. In her graduate program, she researched value-based payment contracts for prescription drugs, implementation challenges for payment reform, and workplace wellness solutions. She also was a taskforce lead for a Duke-Durham partnership to provide closed-loop referrals for non-medical needs and served as an ACA Navigator during open enrollment. Meril started her career in health care consulting, where she spent five years supporting clients in the pharma, patient experience, health tech, and revenue cycle management spaces.