Dr. Charles M. Cutler, MD, MS is Chief Medical Officer for the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP). In this role, he is responsible for clinical policy and activities with health plans to improve quality of care and service. Dr. Cutler also serves as a liaison with the medical community, and works to build relationships with the medical and health services research community. He frequently serves as a spokesman for AAHP on clinical issues in managed care.

Dr. Cutler has more than 20 years of experience in leadership positions in managed care. Before joining AAHP, he was with Prudential HealthCare where he filled two roles as Vice President, Medical Services and President of the Prudential Center for Health Care Research. As Vice President of Medical Services, Dr. Cutler was responsible for technology and clinical practice assessment; national quality improvement activities, policies and programs; disease management programs; and the Institutes of Quality Centers of Excellence Programs. In prior years, he was also responsible for the Health Care Information Management Unit which has responsibility for designing and implementing clinical management reports using data from Prudential's data warehouse. As President of the Prudential Center for Health Care Research, Dr. Cutler set the strategic agenda for the Center, which performs health services research in a managed care environment.

Dr. Cutler is a member of the Committee for Performance Measurement (CPM) of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) which designs the set of reporting measures most commonly used to assess health plan performance - the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS).

Dr. Cutler served as co-chair of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/ American Association of Health Plans (AAHP) Work Group On Clinical Research which produced an agreement to increase the access of managed care patients to clinical trials.

After completing a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota Hospitals, Dr. Cutler joined Rhode Island Group Health Association, a staff model HMO. He practiced general internal medicine, taught medical students and residents at Brown University teaching hospitals, and assumed a range of administrative positions beginning with Chief of Internal Medicine in 1979.

Dr. Cutler was a Sloan Fellow at the Sloan School of Managment at MIT, earning a Master of Management Science (the Sloan equivalent of an MBA) in 1989. His other degrees are from NYU (MD 1973) and the University of Chicago (AB 1969). He is a member of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Physician Executives, the International Society for Quality in Health Care, and the International Association of Technology Assessment in Health Care.