Laurie Coots Daras is a senior health services researcher and project director with 20 years of research experience. Laurie’s primary expertise is in health policy—specifically, national quality and payment policy for postacute and long-term care. She is a quantitative researcher with experience using Medicare claims and other national datasets to measure hospitalizations and readmissions among Medicare beneficiaries for quality reporting and value-based purchasing programs.

As Insight’s health director, Laurie leads business development and strategic planning activities for the health practice area. She supports a variety of projects for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other agencies in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She supports several projects related to nursing home quality, including issues related to the public health emergency and COVID-19.

Prior to joining Insight, Laurie worked at RTI International for 12 years and earlier in academic-based research centers at the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College, and Harvard Medical School. She holds a Ph.D. in social policy from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where she was an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality fellow. She earned a master of science in health policy from Dartmouth College. Laurie’s work has been published in Health Affairs, the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, INQUIRY, and other health services research journals.