William Scanlon, PhD is a consultant to West Health. He was a member of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. He has also served as Co-Chair of the American Board of Medical Specialties Commission on Continuing Board Certification, and on the American Board of Surgery, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York Board of Trustees, the Patient Access Network Foundation Board, the National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS's) Negotiated Rule-Making Committee to Define Health Professional Shortage Areas, the 2005 White House Conference on Aging Advisory Committee, and as co-chair of the 2004 HHS Technical Panel for the Medicare Trustees Report. Until April 2004, he was the Managing Director of health care issues at the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). He has been engaged in health services research since 1975. Before joining GAO in 1993, he was the co-director of the Center for Health Policy Studies and an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Georgetown University and had been a principal research associate in health policy at the Urban Institute. He has a PhD degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.