
Mark Desmarais
Principal
2501 Woodlake Circle, Suite 100 Okemos, MI 48864
Mark Desmarais specializes in Medicare and Medicaid policy consulting with a focus on large dataset analysis, including all Medicare datasets available to the private sector. He is a front-to-back problem solver for clients designing data analysis who strives to answer questions and anticipate future needs. Mark has extensive experience analyzing Medicare and other health datasets and applying the results in solving public policy challenges and supporting policy advocacy in the regulatory and legislative arena. Before joining HMA, Mark was a partner at The Moran Company, now an HMA Company. He manages project teams tackling policy issues across the healthcare spectrum. He has extensive experience helping pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers as they navigate the regulations surrounding the Outpatient and Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems. He has performed in-depth modeling of issues related to the 340B program as well. In addition, Mark has vast experience with regulatory issues in ambulatory surgical centers, dialysis facilities, and skilled nursing facilities. He has led modeling of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) scoring proposals advanced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in implementing the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA). In addition, Mark has analyzed client data warehouses to inform public policymaking on issues where publicly available datasets lacked essential information. He manages client relationships and deliverables, leads small project teams, and trains analysts in programming, policy context, and data analysis. His clients have included pharmaceutical, biotech, and device manufacturers, trade associations, hospitals, and physician specialty societies. Mark graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He has more than 10 years of SAS® programming experience with large healthcare datasets.
Topics
Appearances (1)
2026-06-23
The Human and Economic Toll of Treatment-Resistant DepressionIn this latest episode of the Health Policy Podcast, Mark Desmarais, a principal at Health Management Associates, and Dr. William Sauvé, Chief Medical Officer at Osmind, discuss the economic and human impacts of treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Desmarais highlights a report indicating that individuals with TRD incur approximately $8,000 more in annual healthcare costs compared to those whose depression is well-managed. The conversation also addresses the challenges in diagnosing and treating TRD, emphasizing the need for timely and aggressive interventions to improve patient outcomes and reduce overall healthcare expenditures.
Notable quotes
“Individuals with TRD cost the system about $8,000 more each year than those patients whose depression is well managed.”
“It's having a human impact, but it's also good to remember that it's an economic impact, and that should incentivize everyone to really work harder to solve this problem.”
“In psychiatry, the word resistant is quite fraught... It is the condition itself which is resistant to treatment.”
“This is a chronic illness that can get worse and worse over time.”
“Moving quickly and getting people that life back is of course the thing that I would really, really want to have in mind.”
“If you move to those treatments early in the course, it is highly, highly likely that you're saving much, much, much more than being spent.”






