Fannie E. Rippel Foundation

Morristown, NJ – March 1, 2012 – Elliott S. Fisher, MD, MPH, a renowned expert on health care quality and cost in the United States, has joined the Board of Trustees of the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation. A founding and active member of the Foundation’s ReThink Health initiative, Dr. Fisher is a professor at the Dartmouth Medical School and Director for Population Health and Policy at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Care Policy and Clinical Practice. He is also Co-Principal Investigator on the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care which has captured the nation’s attention by documenting the two-fold differences in health care spending across U.S. regions and health care systems, as well as the impact of these variations on health quality, outcomes, and costs. Dr. Fisher is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

In his role as Director of Population Health and Policy at The Dartmouth Institute, Dr. Fisher leads a team that is making unique contributions to our country by becoming a local and national resource that studies and advances ways to improve the health system. The Dartmouth team’s work builds on the philosophy that:

• A sustainable health system can only be achieved by striving toward three aims: better health, better care, and lower costs. A focus exclusively on any one will likely diminish positive outcomes for the others.
• A sustainable health system must satisfy our fundamental needs and wants and can best be achieved by redesigning clinical systems and community resources and programs to meet these needs at the lowest cost.
• Health and health care are produced and delivered within communities. Local leadership must design and implement local solutions, with national support.
• New measurement systems and new payment models are needed to support health systems and communities in their efforts to achieve the three aims.

Among his many activities, Dr. Fisher is actively involved in national efforts to improve measures of health system performance, to reform payment systems, to develop patient-reported health measures, and to create new models of health care delivery. Dr. Fisher received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Washington, where he also was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and received a master’s degree in public health.

“We are delighted that Elliott Fisher has joined the Foundation’s Board,” said John D. Campbell, Chairman of the Board of the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation. “Dr. Fisher has been a trusted advisor to the Foundation for many years, and his knowledge of the quality and cost of health care in America is unparalleled. His expertise will be of enormous value as we continue to explore innovative ways to improve health outcomes in the nation.”

About the Rippel Foundation

The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation (www.rippelfoundation.org) is a catalyst for new ways of thinking about our health system – to achieve better health, better care and lower costs. The Foundation actively engages leaders in and outside of health who take a systems-based approach to rethinking and redesigning health and care. The Foundation works with them to explore and implement innovative initiatives in order to improve health outcomes for all Americans.