The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice is launching an online Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program in the fall of 2016. The two-year program will include three, one-week residential periods per year ─ making it a more integrated “hybrid” version of the Institute’s existing residential program.
A new Dartmouth study found that admission rates to neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are increasing for newborns of all weights. In effect, NICUs are increasingly caring for normal, or near normal, birth weight and term infants. The study, recently published online by JAMA Pediatrics, raises questions about possible overuse of this highly specialized and expensive care for some newborns.
Policymakers, physicians, and researchers from around the world gathered to discuss the value of measuring health care at a local level during the Wennberg International Collaborative’s first open international policy conference held last month in Berlin, Germany.
Los Angeles Times – Additional coverage on a study by researchers from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel and Harvard, which found that mammogram screening tests aren’t working as hoped. Instead of preventing deaths by uncovering breast tumors at an early, more curable stage, screening mammograms have mainly found small tumors that would have been harmless if left alone.
Boston Globe via Associated Press – Continued coverage on the $17.5 million awarded to Dartmouth from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study how well, and how quickly, hospitals learn from their successes. Quotes Elliott Fisher, director and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, who will lead the work of nine researchers from Geisel joined by others from Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, Intermountain Health Care in Salt Lake City and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Dallas Morning News – Quotes Jonathan Skinner, professor of community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, and professor of economics at Dartmouth, on a recent study that revealed it is common practice at Texas General and two other for-profit medical centers in North Texas to charge patients upward of nine times the cost of care. While insurance companies and federal health care programs arrange lower prices with hospitals, the uninsured don’t have the same negotiating power and are often left with hefty bills.
Health Affairs Blog – References a policy objective for ACOs proposed in Health Affairs in 2007 by Elliott Fisher, director and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and professor of medicine, and community and family medicine, and colleagues from Dartmouth. The policy objective focused on reducing variation in Medicare shared savings rather than containing costs.
Valley News – Dartmouth will receive $17.5 million over five years from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study how well, and how quickly, hospitals learn from their successes. Elliott Fisher, director and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, will lead the work of nine researchers from Geisel joined by others from Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, Intermountain Health Care in Salt Lake City and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Dartmouth has been named one of three National Centers of Excellence by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to study health care delivery and patient outcomes.
Health Affairs Blog – A blog post written by Carrie Colla, assistant professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel; Elliott Fisher, director and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel; Scott Heiser, policy analyst; and Emily Tierny, health policy fellow. In the post, they examine the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ recent changes to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and accountable care organization’s (ACO) concerns about how the financial targets, which determine whether an ACO is successful at saving or guilty of overspending, are determined under the new requirements.
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