Cindy Van

Cindy Manaoat Van develops creative solutions to address client needs and provides technical leadership on operational and implementation projects. She has extensive experience in survey and measure implementation and leading quality improvement initiatives using lean and six sigma.

Van currently leads two key projects under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Center for Clinical Standards and Quality focused on measuring quality and patient experience. Van is the deputy project director for the Qualified Health Plan Enrollee Experience Survey System project (2022—present), a CAHPS-based survey used to assess Marketplace enrollees’ experience with their health plans. She oversees survey implementation to ensure standardized data collection and reporting, development of the QHP Enrollee Survey Technical Specifications for survey vendors, and survey refinement activities. Van also serves as the deputy project director for the Electronic Clinical Quality Measurement for Eligible Clinicians project (2024 – present) and leads the Annual Update process for specifying digital quality measures used in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System. Through both these projects, Van leverages her experience in quality reporting, developing technical specifications, program evaluation, quantitative data collection and process improvement.

Previously, Van led key tasks under the CMS Innovation Center’s Emergency Triage, Treat and Transport Learning System, including coaching model participants in identifying drivers for improvement and multi-payer alignment across Medicare, Commercial and Medicaid payers. Prior to joining AIR, Van also managed projects focused on measuring health outcomes and assessing program performance at nonprofit organizations and health systems. She is a certified professional in Patient Safety and currently uses her hands-on experience leading quality improvement and patient safety initiatives at health systems to contribute to content on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Network.