Coretta Mallery Lankford

Coretta Mallery Lankford leads the design and implementation of work to develop and implement quality measures. Dr. Lankford’s work focuses on survey research design and implementation, development and credentialing of patient-reported experience of care measures and patient-reported outcome measures. Dr. Lankford previously trained as a mental health counselor and brings this lens of direct patient work to her commitment to health care quality improvement and ensuring patient perspectives are reflected in health care measurement tools and other research and evaluation efforts.

Dr. Lankford currently leads the CMS, MIDS Qualified Health Plan Enrollee Experience Survey System project (2022–Present) to oversee a national survey system to assess consumers’ experiences with the qualified health plans that are sold on the Health Insurance Exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act. 

Additionally, Dr. Lankford is the principal investigator for a grant for NIDILRR to develop and validate a virtual method for conducting surveys for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities using the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems Home and Community-Based Services survey (HCBS CAHPS), in English and Spanish.

Previously, Dr. Lankford let the development, testing and credentialling of the HCBS CAHPS Survey, the first cross-disability survey of beneficiaries’ experience receiving long-term services and supports and facilitates comparisons across the hundreds of state Medicaid HCBS programs throughout the country that serve different adult populations with disabilities—for example, frail elderly, individuals with physical disabilities, persons with developmental or intellectual disabilities, those with acquired brain injury, and persons with severe mental illness. Additionally, Dr. Lankford led a project for FDA to conduct formative research toward a PROM or PerfO Measure for Ocular Bioelectronic Implants in Patients with Profound Vision Loss and the validation of a screening tool to assess opioid misuse in people with disabilities including instrument design, planning the field test, and analysis of field test data.