Can Harvard retain key cancer grant?
Leaders at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute remain tight-lipped about whether federal officials will renew a major grant for cancer research across Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and five of its teaching hospitals including Dana-Farber -- seen as a major test of whether these ultra-competitive institutions actually can cooperate on research projects.
In a recent e-mail to Harvard cancer doctors, Dr. Edward Benz, Dana-Farber's president, acknowledged that five years ago, when the National Cancer Institute first awarded the $50 million grant over five years, there was ''national skepticism about the ability of Harvard institutions to work collaboratively."
But it looks like Harvard has convinced the NCI that it can play nice. Benz wrote in his e-mail that the NCI review team approved 90 percent of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center's requested budget for the next five years, which doctors said is about $15 million a year.
Benz also said that the cancer center earned an outstanding score: 126 on a scale of 100 to 500. (The lower the better.) The application was thousands of pages.
But don't think cooperation is easy. One insider said that the process included ''a lot of political horse-trading" to make sure each hospital got credit for certain projects.
Release of surgery data considered
Executives at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, one of the state's largest health insurers, are pushing state officials to release data comparing the surgery and procedure rates of Massachusetts doctors.
In many other states, patients can look up how many times the heart surgeon they're considering has performed cardiac bypass surgery or how many colonoscopies a particular gastroenterologist has done. The amount of practice a doctor has is a key indicator of how skilled he or she is at the procedure.
But in Massachusetts, state officials who collect this data scramble each doctors' individual identification number, so no one can pinpoint the number of procedures they've done. ''Getting this changed would certainly improve the quality of information we provide consumers," said Charlie Baker, chief executive of Harvard Pilgrim, which has been posting data comparing hospitals on its website.
Looks like he may be onto something. In the fall, state officials plan to propose a change in the regulations -- a move that could raise the ire of the Massachusetts Medical Society, a lobby group for physicians. But as one state official said: ''The thinking on this has evolved. More transparency is better."
Berwick's meteor still soaring
Dr. Donald Berwick's star continues to rise. One month after Queen Elizabeth appointed the Harvard pediatrician and policy wonk an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire -- the first American from New England made an honorary knight in at least 15 years -- Berwick, 58, is again attracting top honors.
Readers of Modern Healthcare, the industry's top trade magazine, voted him the third most powerful person in health care after Mike Leavitt, US secretary of health and human services, and Bill Gates,
Berwick, who heads the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, a research and consulting firm, seems to have more and more in common with the bespectacled computer guru. Gates was previously made an honorary knight by the queen, too.
