Richard F. Averill is Principal Consultant at Hesperium and a pioneer in the design of healthcare payment systems that link the financial and clinical aspects of care. As director of health-related research at the Yale School of Management from 1972-1982, he was one of the lead developers of the Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) and the case mix cost accounting system that became the foundation for the DRG-based Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). He was chief consultant to the state of New Jersey on the demonstration project to design and implement the first DRG prospective payment system.

He subsequently founded Health Systems International, which was acquired by 3M Health Information Systems in 1990. As Senior Vice President of Clinical and Economic Research at 3M, he was the principal investigator on a series of contracts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to update and maintain the DRGs, design and develop the Ambulatory Payment Classification system (APCs), the Medicare Severity DRGs (MS-DRGs), and the ICD-10 Procedure Coding System. He was also responsible for the design and development of many widely used patient classification systems including All Patient Refined DRGs (APR DRGs). He retired from 3M in 2016 and founded The Hesperium Group. 

Averill has worked extensively with state Medicaid agencies on integrating payment adjustments for quality into Medicaid payment systems. He has been listed multiple times as one of the 100 most influential people in health care by Modern Health Care magazine. He is a frequent speaker on health care reform, has testified before Congress, and has authored over 80 articles in healthcare policy and management journals.