Ronald Kline, M.D., FAAP

Chief Medical Officer of the Quality Measurement and Value-based Incentives Group
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Fellowship Profile

Fellowship Year: 2013-2014
Fellowship Placement: Sen Wyden (D-OR)
Sponsoring Institution: National Academy of Medicine
Disciplines / Professions: Oncology, Pediatric-Subspecialty

Biography

Ron Kline is a board-certified pediatric hematologist/oncologist and the Chief Medical Officer of the Quality Measurement and Value-based Incentives Group (QMVIG) in the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). QMVIG is responsible for the development, evaluation, implementation, and support for quality measurement programs across the entire federally-funded health care continuum. This includes Medicare’s Quality Payment Program and the Inpatient and Outpatient Quality Reporting Programs. These innovative programs work to improve healthcare quality for all Americans.
Prior to his work at CMS, he served as the Chief Medical Officer for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for more than three years. In that role, he served as the resident medical expert with program responsibilities encompassing the health insurance industry, health policy, population health, benefit design, standards of care, quality improvement, and regulatory initiatives. This role included oversight of health insurance plans providing coverage to 8.2 million federal employees, retirees and their families through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program and the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP).
Before assuming his role at OPM, he was a medical officer in the Patient Care Models Group at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) for almost five years. During this time, he was the clinical lead for the Oncology Care Model, the Medicare Care Choices Model, and the Radiation Oncology Model, as well as team lead during the preliminary development of the Enhancing Oncology Model. He was a CMS representative to Vice President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative. As a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Fellow in 2013-14, he focused on health policy in the office of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden and at CMMI.

He has been a clinical pediatric hematologist–oncologist for more than 30 years, serving as the medical director of the Pediatric Division of Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada, the largest multispecialty oncology group in Nevada, immediately prior to accepting his RWJF fellowship. He has remained clinically active while at CMS and OPM, previously working (as part of his CMS/OPM duties) in pediatric hematology/oncology at Walter Reed Military Medical Center and currently working at Johns Hopkins. He also works on weekends as a pediatric emergency department physician at Ascension St Agnes Hospital in Baltimore.