Charles W. Wrightson, Jr., PhD, is the vice president and secretary of Actuarial Research Corporation, a Washington-based research and consulting firm, where he has worked since 1978 on a wide variety of studies concerning health finance issues and managed care delivery systems. Dr. Wrightson’s work has included numerous studies and consulting assignments with managed care organizations.

He has published in the areas of hmo utilization and costs, evaluation of health programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and healthcare financial analysis. His publications have appeared in Medical Care, Health Affairs, Journal of Applied Probability, Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, GHAA Journal, and Health Care Financing Review. He authored hmo Rate Setting and Financial Strategy (Health Administration Press 1990).

He received a BA in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University (Phi Beta Kappa). He earned his MS and PhD degrees in operations research and an MPH degree in health administration and planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

He has lectured at the University of California, George Washington University, and aahp’s minority training program on hmo finance and premium rate setting. Dr. Wrightson was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he taught graduate-level quantitative methods courses in the master’s degree program in public policy.