Inconsistencies in the amount and kind of health care you receive are largely driven by where you live. This kind of variation underlies our increasingly complex and costly health care system. TDI Founder Dr. John (Jack) E. Wennberg pioneered research in unwarranted variation. His visionary analyses exposed the highly irrational delivery of health care in the United States, leading to improvements in patient care and systems of care, and dramatically influencing health care delivery and public policy throughout the U.S. and increasingly throughout the world. He was the first to suggest—and to show conclusively—that more care is not always best and that patient outcomes are often better with more conservative treatment. His vision, started 40 years ago, began to unravel the mystery of our national health care system.

Through The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, TDI has documented variations in how medical resources are distributed and used. Geographic variation is used to document the underuse of effective care, misuse of preference-sensitive care, and overuse of supply-sensitive care.

Dr. Elliott S. Fisher explains how variation informs clinical practice and provides insight to strategic health care system reforms.

Understanding the Implications of Variation: Dr. Jack Wennberg's Tracking Medicine

 

Course Format: Online

Course runs from: March 6, 2013 - April 10, 2013

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Tracking Medicine is an eye-opening introduction to the science of health care delivery, as well as a powerful argument for its relevance in shaping the future of our country. An indispensable resource for those involved in public health and health policy, Tracking Medicine uses Dr. Jack Wennberg's pioneering research to provide a framework for understanding the health care crisis; and outlines a roadmap for real change in the future.

This course will explore Dr. Wennberg's groundbreaking book on practice variations. Through a series of lectures, Dr. Wennberg describes his and his colleagues' work beginning with small area variation in Vermont, extending through efforts to evaluate the reasons behind variation in surgical procedures, and concluding with the more recent work associated with overuse of supply sensitive care as described in the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care.

Dr. Thom Walsh will facilitate and guide participants to:

• Define the potential for societal savings in healthcare expenditures implied by geographic variation research.
• Demonstrate an ability to retrieve and organize data on Medicare reimbursements from the Dartmouth Atlas.
• Distinguish three types of health care, effective, supply-sensitive, and preference sensitive
• Explain the difference between societal spending and institutional costs
• Integrate knowledge of unwarranted variation to recommend strategies to reduce health care spending.

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