Elliott S. Fisher

Elliott S. Fisher is a researcher and advocate for improving health system performance and the director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Dartmouth College. He is the co-founder of ReThink Health and the John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professor of Health Policy, Medicine and Community and Family Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He is the son of late Harvard academic Roger Fisher and brother of Peter R. Fisher.

Fisher earned a BA from Harvard College in East Asia Studies in 1976; a MD from Harvard Medical School in 1981; and a MPH in health research from the University of Washington in 1985.

In 1986, Fisher became a member of the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School (now the Geisel School of Medicine), where he continues to teach. He also served as a physician at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont, from 1986 to 2004.

Fisher assumed the directorship of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in 2013, and he served as the institute’s Director of the Centers for Population Health and Healthy Policy Research from 2007 through 2009.

A general internist, Fisher’s early research focused on the promise and pitfalls of using of large databases, such as vital records, census data, and Medicare claims to study health care.

In the last three decades, Fisher led studies that used claims data and other data sources to explore the causes and consequences of the dramatic differences in spending and utilization of health care across the country, research that revealed that the excess spending in high cost regions was largely due to overuse of discretionary—often avoidable—services and that higher utilization was not associated with better quality or health outcomes. He concluded that the United States is wasting a substantial portion of spending on avoidable and potentially harmful care. The landmark research was cited by Peter R. Orszag as President Barack Obama’s administration crafted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

...
Wikipedia