About

Claudia M. Rausch brings 15 years of healthcare policy and regulatory experience — including 12 years serving the federal government across VA healthcare operations and federal NPDB policy. Throughout her career she has operated at the intersection of federal healthcare law, public policy, and national compliance standards — building the operational systems that healthcare institutions rely on to meet their most consequential regulatory obligations.

For 7 of those years, she served as a Management Analyst and policy subject matter expert at the National Practitioner Data Bank — leading and participating in improvement projects of national impact in support of a federal program serving over 500,000 constituents and stakeholders including healthcare organizations, legislators, policymakers, public interest groups, and members of the press. She managed and oversaw routine updates of legislative guidance and content in the NPDB Guidebook — the primary interpretive resource used by hospitals and Medical Staff Services Offices nationwide to understand their federal reporting and querying obligations. She drafted rulings on behalf of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and responses to high-level inquiries from entities such as members of Congress. She analyzed complex federal legislation and public health policies, serving as policy subject matter expert on NPDB regulatory requirements and healthcare system industry standards — conducting complex research to anticipate, shape, and execute responses, plans, and far-reaching strategies in a manner that ensured the most effective use of government resources. She trained staff on advanced stakeholder analysis methodology, strategic planning techniques, and process improvement protocols.

She led the 2019 Education and Outreach Action Team strategy resulting in the deployment of the most highly attended webcast series in the entire agency of the Health Resources and Services Administration — the federal agency that oversees the NPDB. She delivered high-level presentations and briefings, representing the NPDB before the healthcare community and other government departments through public speaking engagements and educational webinars — educating stakeholders and constituents while effectively addressing controversial topics and defending NPDB's mission to deter fraud and abuse. She was recognized as a Finalist in the HHS IDEA Lab Ignite Accelerator Innovation Competition — issued by the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services — for her work reimagining alternative medical malpractice dispute models and enhancing malpractice data frameworks in a changing environment. She was further recognized and awarded by NPDB leadership for implementing a cost-saving Six Sigma tool to guide prioritization of NPDB projects in a manner that capitalized on ROI.

Before her NPDB role, she served as Director of Credentialing and Privileging at VA Puget Sound — one of the most operationally complex federal healthcare institutions in the country — leading a team of 11 and overseeing credentialing and privileging for 1,700+ physicians across 39 clinical specialties and approximately 3,000 clinicians total. She has sat in hundreds of Medical Executive Committee meetings and understands precisely how privileging decisions are made across the full spectrum of clinical specialties — from primary care to the most complex surgical and subspecialty fields. She developed, implemented, and streamlined Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation — the formal process through which hospitals continuously monitor and assess physician competency — across multiple clinical service areas, building systems that ensured consistent, defensible, and compliant evaluations at scale. Her track record of zero findings across 7 Joint Commission surveys across multiple healthcare systems represents not just personal expertise — but the institutional risk mitigation that hospital leadership depends on when regulatory scrutiny is highest.

Across her federal career, she served as a supervisor for 5 years across two VA healthcare systems — managing staff performance, federal personnel processes, and the operational demands of credentialing and Medical Staff Services departments during periods of significant institutional complexity. Earlier in her career she built a comprehensive foundation in Medical Staff Services operations across both private and federal healthcare systems — gaining hands-on experience in credentialing, privileging, Medical Staff committee operations, and compliance across institutions of varying size and complexity.

She has been recognized as a public leader and speaker — named a Keynote Speaker by the Association for Women in Communications, Seattle Professional Chapter, and honored as a "4 Under 40" honoree and speaker by ALPFA Seattle — recognitions that reflect both professional distinction and community leadership at the regional level.

She completed LEAN Healthcare Black Belt training through Purdue University and applies Six Sigma methodology across all engagements — bringing rigorous process improvement discipline to identify gaps, eliminate inefficiencies, and build systems that perform under scrutiny. She studied Organizational Psychology at the University of London.

Claudia M. Rausch does not offer generic compliance advice. She brings the institutional knowledge of someone who helped build the system — and spent years helping the nation's healthcare institutions understand it. Consultations are strictly confidential.