The Center for Health Policy Research at The Dartmouth Institute
Research Projects
The Dartmouth Atlas. In the beginning, there was the Dartmouth Atlas. 20 years ago, Dr. John E. Wennberg (founder of TDI) published the first Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, which for the first time provided comprehensive national and regional information on the performance of the U.S. health care system. To date, 20 editions of the Atlas have been published, each looking at a different area of health care delivery. The Atlas is now the primary reference cited for documenting the stark disparities in quality and provision of health care in the U.S.
The Primary Care Service Area (PCSA) Project. The Primary Care Service Area Project is a federally funded initiative to improve information about the adequacy of primary services within small primary care markets. The project data is publicly available and is used for federal and state planning purposes, program evaluation, and research.
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) Project. An active research group at Dartmouth and other institutions share a common research interest: to better understand the workings of the U.S. health care system, and more specifically to evaluate and consider ways to improve its efficiency: better quality care at lower cost. This research is funded primarily by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) an institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with important support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Brookings-CHPR Collaborative. TDI's collaboration with the renowned Brookings Institution provides a potent partnering of our research and Brookings' strong presence in Washington, D.C. to accelerate real change in U.S. health care. Mark McClellan, Director of the Engleberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings, and Elliott S. Fisher, Associate Director of TDI, most recently published a paper showing that Medicare could save money and improve health care quality through a shared savings program.
Medicare spending in the last two years of life varies almost twofold from the lowest-spending state, North Dakota, to the highest, New Jersey. Three hot spots of aggressive care: New Jersey, New York, and California.
So, why does the health-care system serve up so much more care in New York than in Iowa? "Doctors decide who needs health care, what kind, and how much but have surprisingly little information on what the 'right' amount actually is," says Dartmouth's Jack Wennberg.