Wednesday, January 21, 2009

New President, New Health Policies?

Here at TDI we focus a lot of energy on trying to improve access to and quality of health care services and exploring ways to make health care more affordable. Although many people recognize this, it was great to hear President Obama say in his inaugural address that “we will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.” We know from The Dartmouth Atlas that the cost of care has little to nothing to do with the quality of care that patients receive and we are glad the administration seems to be asking questions about what options there are to improve the quality of care while cutting the costs. We were all excited about the white paper submitted by several of our faculty members to the new administration (which is featured on the TDI homepage now http://tdi.dartmouth.edu/) and are excited to have that as a wonderful example as we begin to find topics to write white papers of our own for our Environmental and Occupational Health class this term. Hopefully some of the issues raised in the TDI white paper will be addressed, as for now we have a new president, and now we’ll just have to wait…and study.

-Shannon

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Happy New Year

It's an exciting time to be learning about health and health care in America and TDI is on the cutting edge of U.S. reform efforts. The Institute's cognoscenti just published a white paper outlining some of the issues that should be high on the new president's list of priorities.

Not only do we study the data that informs these policy leaders' opinions, but Elliott Fisher, James Weinstein, and others come to our classes and fill in all the details. It's really inspiring to hear their thoughts and then later see their comments and opinions appear in the Wall Street Journal, NEJM, or the NYTimes. We look forward to posting updates during the next few months about what we learn and how it will prepare us for leading change in health care.

As we at TDI speed headlong into a new term, I also thought it might be worthwhile to post the mission, vision and values of the Institute in the first blog post of 2009:

An Ambitious Mission: The Dartmouth Institute aspires to be the preeminent research and educational institution devoted to the ongoing reform of the U.S. health care system.

An Altruistic Vision: To achieve a patient-centered, high-quality, cost-effective health care system with access and excellence for all.

A Core of Values: We believe in commitment, education, excellence, dignity, integrity, diversity, trust and respect for all.

Happy New Year.

-Sam W.