Hoping to improve China's health care delivery system as it undergoes a five-year reform plan, the College has entered into a partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Health, a College press release announced on Thursday. A Chinese delegation led by Minghui Ren, director-general of the Department of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Health, visited Hanover last week for a series of discussions with members of the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science. The partnership was initially established when Dartmouth representatives traveled to Beijing in October 2011 to sign an agreement. However, the Center waited to publicize the agreement until Chinese delegations came to Hanover, according to Al Mulley '70, director of the Center.
Mulley said that the Chinese Ministry of Health was particularly interested in shared and informed decision making, an area of health care in which Dartmouth has been a leader.
"They want to achieve much greater collaboration between doctors and patients, they want to improve the quality of care and they also want to improve patient satisfaction," Mulley said.
By implementing such a strategy, which involves a closer doctor-patient relationship, hospitals find lower costs and better results, according to Mulley.
The College's focus on lower health care costs and increasing efficiency made Dartmouth an attractive ally to the Chinese government, he said. Dartmouth's research and practices have also demonstrated that expanding health care does not necessarily improve health. The five-year partnership will focus on five areas of work reform and redesign of health care delivery; advancement of the science of health care delivery in the Chinese context; design of an interdisciplinary health care delivery science curriculum to meet China's needs; reform of medical education and training; and provision of educational opportunities to support China's health care leadership, according to the press release.
While the Chinese Ministry of Health has the benefit of learning from Dartmouth's past experiences and mistakes with health care delivery, Mulley said the Center will be able to watch and assist China's health care development as it grows from a very minimal level of development.
"We think we can learn from their successes and their failures, just as they can learn from our successes and our failures," Mulley said.
Whereas 17 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product is dedicated to health care, nations like the United Kingdom devote only about 9 percent of GDP. This discrepancy constitutes a shortcoming of U.S. health care infrastructure, according to Mulley. Because China will create an entirely new infrastructure, it has the unique opportunity to try novel health care delivery methods, he said. The partnership will feature various symposiums between Chinese delegates and representatives from Dartmouth, as well as student and fellow exchanges and specific innovation projects, for which administrators are currently identifying pilot program sites, according to the release. Michael Lachenmayer GR '13, who is pursuing a master's degree in health care delivery science at the Center, said he is enthusiastic about the partnership. "I think that if you have a country coming to Dartmouth unquestionably the most populous country on earth, to address these problems it's fantastic," he said. The Center, which began offering the master's degree in health care delivery science in 2011, will correspond directly with the Ministry, aided by its relationship with various Dartmouth institutions, including the Geisel School of Medicine, The Dartmouth Institute, the Tuck School of Business and the Thayer School of Engineering, Mulley said.
