David R Scrase MD

David R. Scrase, MD, is a Professor of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He is also the Interim Division Chief for General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics. 

He completed his undergraduate and medical training at the University of Michigan, and his Internal Medicine Residency training at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He received his Masters of Health Services Administration degree from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. 

He has held a variety of administrative positions through the years, including twelve years in medical education, as well as numerous healthcare executive positions in Michigan and New Mexico. He recently worked with the New Mexico Medicaid program to rapidly expand treatment benefit coverage for all members with hepatitis C infection. 

Dr. Scrase has been named one of America’s Best Doctors each year from 1997 to 2018. For five consecutive years, his peers selected him as Albuquerque’s “Top Doc” in Geriatric Medicine.  

While not seeing patients and teaching, he also serves as a speaker, consultant and writer. He provides entertaining and academic talks at the local and national level on a wide variety of topics, including fascinating medical cases, successful aging, health policy, mindfulness, and happiness.  Under the pen name of David Roberts, in 2013 he published, Practice Makes Perfect: How One Doctor Found the Meaning of Lives, which chronicles lessons he has learned from his most interesting patients. 

He current is working with a multidisciplinary group to develop, pilot, and implement a program to improve quality of care metrics and readmission rates for Medicaid members in nursing facilities in New Mexico.