Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Mayo Clinic & D-H Collaborating

The Mayo Clinic and Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H) have formed a formal collaboration to bring the strengths of both organizations together to improve health and healthcare quality while lowering overall costs. Under the agreement, Dartmouth-Hitchcock will become a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network, a growing network of like-mined organizations that share a commitment to serve patients and their families.

This collaboration gives Mayo Clinic a unique relationship in the Northeast corridor of the U.S. and strengthens long-standing ties between the two organizations that date back to the founding of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic in 1927. More recently, Dartmouth Hitchcock and Mayo have been frequent collaborators on research, grants, clinical care, and on health policy and health reform issues.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock will remain an independent entity under the agreement. As a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network, Dartmouth-Hitchcock physicians and providers will have access to Mayo Clinic resources, including tools to promote physician-to-physician consultations and a point-of-care database with best practice information on disease management, care guidelines, treatment recommendations, and reference materials.

Some of Mayo’s information sharing tools includes:

  • eConsult brings the expertise of a Mayo medical specialist to outside communities
  • AskMayoExpert is a web-based information system that allows doctors to quickly connect with expert clinical information on hundreds of medical conditions 24/7
  • Business and administrative consulting enables members of the network to have access to peers, tools, and expertise in business processes
In addition to their collaboration through the Mayo Clinic Care Network, Mayo and Dartmouth-Hitchcock are discussing a number of future joint projects that include projects to advance population health, the use of large data systems, projects to expand clinical and basic research, joint educational initiatives, and projects to find ways to advance healthcare delivery.