After promoting the idea of a national institute on healthcare delivery at Dartmouth College since he arrived on campus nearly a year ago, Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim will use an anonymous $35 million donation to explore what he calls "the real rocket science in healthcare right now."
Set to begin enrolling students by the summer of 2011, the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science will offer healthcare-related classes to undergraduates and introduce a new master's degree in healthcare delivery science. Focusing on healthcare research, education, collaboration, implementation, advocacy and quality improvement, the Center will bring together multidisciplinary experts to analyze what makes some systems, such as the Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic, successful. Practitioners then can return home and make changes immediately, Kim said.
The new field of study will represent health reform's next test, according to Kim and TDI director James Weinstein. "Americans deserve healthcare that is coordinated across physicians and health systems, and that is effective, appropriate and safe," they wrote in the Washington Post. "As a nation, we have a moral and a fiscal responsibility to ensure that all patients receive value for health services. While the achievement of health insurance reform was historic, it is time to focus on the next step: improving quality while bending the unsustainable cost curve significantly."
For more information:
- read this Washington Post commentary
- read this press release from Dartmouth Medical School
- check out this Associated Press article
- read this piece in The Dartmouth