Stephen T. Parente, Ph.D.

Stephen T. Parente, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Finance in the Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota, where he specializes in health information technology, health e-commerce, outcomes research, health economics, and managed care. Dr. Parente has extensive experience directing empirical analyses using primary and secondary data bases and is acknowledged as a national expert on using administrative databases, particularly Medicare and private insurer data, for health policy research. He has served has a consultant to several of the largest organizations in health care delivery, including UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, HealthNet, Pfizer, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Medtronic, the Mayo Clinic, and various state governments and biotechnology firms. Parente has recently concluded several studies on topics including the impact of Medicare HMO closures on beneficiaries, identifying patterns of controlled substance misuse within managed care plans as a patient safety tool, and the impact of elderly consumer health benefit knowledge of medical care demand and cost.

He has received two HCFO grants, both which focus on consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs). In his first HCFO project titled, “Evaluation of Defined Contribution Plans on Health Insurance Choice and Medical Care Use,” Parente and his colleagues examined the service use and adverse selection of consumers who select a CDHP, as well as the experience of “early adopters” from both the employer and employee perspective. This early evaluation of CDHP expenditures and utilization revealed that the new CDHP paradigm is a viable alternative to existing health plan designs. Additionally, this research has shown that enrollees in the CDHP have lower total expenditures than preferred provider organization (PPO) enrollees, but higher utilization of resource-intensive hospital admissions after an initially favorable selection.

Dr. Parente’s second HCFO project, “The Impact of Multiple Consumer Driven Health Plans Beyond Early Adoption: Here to Stay or Market Fad?” will build on his earlier project outlined above by exploring the long-term impact of CDHPs, specifically their impact on quality of care, cost, utilization, and variation in these outcomes by different CDHP designs, including Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). The objective of this study is to provide objective, empirical analyses of the impacts of CDHPs and newly developing HSA products on consumers. Ongoing findings from these projects are posted at www.ehealthplan.org.

Dr. Parente also holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota faculty, he gained a broad range of private and public sector health finance and policy experience by serving as a legislative fellow in the office of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D W.V.) during the Bush and Clinton Administrations’ health reform initiatives, and designing provider and health plan financial and quality of care profiles for public and private insurers. Dr. Parente holds a Ph.D. in healthcare finance and organization from Johns Hopkins University, and a M.P.H, M.S. and B.A. from the University of Rochester-New York.