For Release: October 9, 2006
Contact: DMS Communications (603) 650-1492

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DMS Professor Elected to Institute of Medicine

Hanover, NH—Dartmouth Medical School Professor Elliott S. Fisher was among the 65 new active members elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), considered among the nation's premier accolades for contributions to health and medicine.


Dr. Elliot Fisher

Fisher, professor of medicine and of community and family medicine at DMS and the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, is also founding director and now senior associate of the VA Outcomes Group of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont. He teaches in the clinical evaluative sciences master's program and helps produce the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care.

"It is a great pleasure to welcome these distinguished and influential individuals to the Institute of Medicine," said IOM President Harvey V. Fineberg. "Members are elected through a highly selective process that recognizes people who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care and public health. Election is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of medicine and health."

Fisher is recognized for landmark work documenting that US regions with higher medical spending do not provide better quality or achieve better long- term health outcomes. His research focuses on: clarifying the mechanisms of harm from too much medical care; exploring the causes of geographic variations in medical practice and spending--and the consequences of these variations for health and health care; and the development of measures of the quality and costs of care.

He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Washington, where he also was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and received a Master of Public Health. He has served on the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and, more recently, on the IOM Committee on Redesigning Health Insurance Benefits, Payment and Performance Improvement Programs, where he co-chaired the subcommittee on performance measurement.

The Institute of Medicine is both an honorific membership and an advisory organization. Established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, it has become recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on issues related to human health. Current active members elect new members from among candidates nominated for their professional achievement and commitment to service. With election, members commit to devote volunteer time on IOM study committees.

The IOM release is available at http://national-academies.org.

-DMS-

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