Dr. Saunders is Senior Research Director, Health Care Transformation at Duke-Margolis.  In this role, he directs a portfolio of payment and delivery reform initiatives, which focus on ACOs, alternative payment models for specialty care, new payment and delivery approaches for serious illness care, and translating evidence to policy-relevant options.

Prior to joining Duke-Margolis, Dr. Saunders was a Senior Director and then Senior Advisor to the President of the National Quality Forum, where he managed a large federally-funded project that provided recommendations on more than 200 quality measures for 20 different federal programs in a period of two months. As Senior Advisor, he directed special projects on topics including data, payment reform, systems engineering, and future of healthcare quality measurement. There, he authored targeted communications to translate the organization’s technical work for a broad audience, including journal perspectives, white papers, and blogs and supported the development of new funding opportunities, including developing relationships with foundations and authoring concept papers and proposals. He was previously Senior Program Officer at the Institute of Medicine and managed health care legislative affairs for Representative Rush D. Holt.

He has previously served as an adjunct professorial lecturer at American University and the Duke University Program in Medical Physics.  He served on the Duke University Board of Trustees from 2005-2007.