Carrie Colla, PhD

A health economist, Carrie Colla focuses on physician payment, health insurance markets, and insurance benefit design. Her work is aimed at improving the quality, accessibility, and cost of health care.

Colla’s investigator-initiated research is dedicated to examining health system performance and the effectiveness of payment and delivery system reforms, including accountable care organizations. Her empirical studies include the effects of changes in Medicare reimbursement for physicians and institutional providers on high-need, high-cost patients; the prevalence and drivers of low-value health care services; and labor market effects of health insurance expansions, among others.

Colla has been an investigator for the annual National Survey of Accountable Care Organizations (NSACO) since its inception in 2012, and she is a lead investigator in Dartmouth’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Center of Excellence to Study High-Performing Health Care Systems. She teaches health economics and policy at Dartmouth College. Dr. Colla was chosen to participate in the 2017-2018 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows program, with placements in the House of Representatives and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. In 2020, Dr. Colla was selected as an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar by the National Academy of Medicine.

Colla received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, and her MA in economics and PhD in health policy from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the past recipient of a SYNERGY Career Development Award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.

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