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For Release: August 5, 2010
Contact:
David Corriveau, Media-Relations Officer, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, at david.a.corriveau@dartmouth.edu or 603-653-0771; or
Deborah G. Kimbell, Director of Communications and External Relations, The Dartmouth Institute, at deborah.g.kimbell@dartmouth.edu or 603-650-6694.

Weinstein, Fisher Receive Endowed Chairs


James M. Weinstein, D.O., M.S.

Elliott S. Fisher, M.D., M.P.H.

Lebanon, N.H.—Two nationally recognized scholars in the field of health services research are recipients of endowed professorships from Dartmouth Medical School (DMS).

James N. Weinstein, D.O., M.S., has been named the Peggy Y. Thomson Professor in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences. Elliott S. Fisher, M.D., M.P.H. has been appointed the James W. Squires, M.D., Professor.

Weinstein is a professor and the founding chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at DMS and Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H). He directs The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI) and in February of 2010 was named president of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic. As holder of the Thomson Chair, he succeeds his colleague and mentor, John E. Wennberg, M.D., for whom the professorship was established in 1994 - the first endowed chair in the United States designated for work in the then-emerging field of evaluative clinical sciences.

Dr. Weinstein founded the Center for Shared Decision-Making at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and is a leader in the implementation of informed choice in patient care. The Spine Center he started at D-H has become an international model for incorporating shared decision-making and uniquely comprehensive methods of measuring clinical outcomes. He is the principal investigator for the Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT), a 12-year national study of the effectiveness of the most common surgical treatments for lower back pain.

Dr. Fisher is a professor of medicine and of community and family medicine at DMS, and directs the Center for Population Health and Policy at TDI. He also serves at primary investigator for the Dartmouth Atlas Project and co-directs the Outcomes Group at the Dartmouth-affiliated Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont.

With Mark McClellan, former director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and head of the Engleberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, Fisher formed the Dartmouth-Brookings Partnership, which has played a key role in developing the concept of the Accountable Care Organization as a way to deliver health care of improved quality at lower costs.

Andrew Thomson Jr., M.D. - a 1946 graduate of Dartmouth College and former member of various governing and advisory bodies at the college, the medical school, and the medical center - endowed the Peggy Y. Thomson Professorship in honor of his wife.

Endowed in 1998, the Squires Chair honors James Squires, M.D., founder of the Matthew Thornton Health Plan, the first health-maintenance organization in New Hampshire. Squires is currently the president of the New Hampshire Endowment for Health.

DMS Dean William R. Green, Ph.D., points out that an endowed chair is among the most important gifts to higher education, given to honor and recognize the distinction of superior faculty while providing invaluable financial support use in research, teaching or service activities.

-DMS-

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