{"id":3920,"date":"2014-09-19T10:40:28","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T14:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=3920"},"modified":"2014-10-08T15:09:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T19:09:23","slug":"fisher-awarded-the-john-e-wennberg-distinguished-professorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2014\/fisher-awarded-the-john-e-wennberg-distinguished-professorship\/","title":{"rendered":"Fisher Awarded the John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elliott Fisher, MD, MPH, has been named the inaugural holder of the John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professorship at Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine. Internationally known for his research and writings about health care systems and policy, Fisher directs\u00a0The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice<\/a>, founded by John \u201cJack\u201d Wennberg in 1988, at the Geisel School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

\"This is a wonderful and fitting honor for Elliott Fisher as he continues Jack Wennberg\u2019s legacy of excellence and innovation in research and education through the application of rigorous epidemiologic methods in health-care delivery,\u201d said Duane Compton, Interim Dean of the Geisel School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

The John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professorship was made possible by the generosity of 26 donors, who together gave $5 million to establish the endowed professorship. Distinguished professorships are the highest honor awarded to faculty members. They provide a stable source of funding to enable senior professors to pursue their passions in research, teaching, and other academic activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m incredibly honored and humbled to receive this professorship,\u201d said Fisher, who co-directs the\u00a0Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care<\/a>\u00a0and is a Professor of Medicine and of Community and Family Medicine at Geisel. \u201cJack has been a mentor, a collaborator, and the single greatest influence on my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forty years ago, Dr. Jack Wennberg and Dr. Alan Gittelsohn published the seminal article on geographic variations in health care in the journal\u00a0Science.\u00a0\u00a0Their paper revealed that much of what doctors do was based less on science than on professional opinion and the capacity of the local health-care system. \u00a0The questions raised by Wennberg\u2019s early findings established the research agenda for a generation of investigators and led\u00a0Health Affairs\u00a0to name Wennberg the most important health services researcher of the last 25 years. (For more on Wennberg\u2019s legacy, read\u00a0From Pariah to Pioneer.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

One of those questions was whether one should assume that\u00a0more\u00a0health care means\u00a0better\u00a0care.\u00a0 It was Fisher who, three decades after the\u00a0Science\u00a0paper was published, showed that the greater-than-two-fold differences in spending across U.S. regions could not be explained by differences in health status or patient preferences.\u00a0 And, more importantly, he demonstrated convincingly that higher spending was largely due to greater use of discretionary services, such as potentially avoidable hospital stays, and that greater use of these services was not associated with better quality or outcomes. Fisher\u2019s research was the first to show that up to 30 percent of U.S. health-care spending was being wasted on potentially unnecessary care.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first read about Jack\u2019s research on geographic variations in health-care spending and outcomes when I was a medical student at Harvard,\u201d said Fisher. \u201cEven then, I knew he was asking really important questions about health care. When I finished my training, I felt incredibly lucky to join the Dartmouth faculty and have a chance to collaborate with Jack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"I\u2019m extremely proud of Elliott and very pleased that he has been appointed to the professorship named in my honor,\u201d said Wennberg. \u201cUnder his leadership, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice is assured a bright future--and many more important questions about health care will continue to be asked.\"<\/p>\n

Fisher has been highly influential in his own right. He has developed and evaluated policies to slow the growth of health-care spending while improving quality. He is one of the originators of the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) concept and worked with colleagues to conduct research that led to the inclusion of ACOs in the Affordable Care Act. His current work focuses on exploring the determinants of successful ACO formation and performance, as well as understanding how to create successful local health systems. Fisher is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n

Fisher earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and completed his internal medicine residency and public health training at the University of Washington. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar before joining the Dartmouth faculty in 1986.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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