Partners HealthCare®

Latest News

Exciting Developments for the International Programs at Partners HealthCare

With the goal of expanding and enhancing our corporate commitment to global health, Partners HealthCare has recently moved to align the strategies and activities of its two key international collaboration entities: Partners Harvard Medical International (PHMI) and Partners International Medical Services (PIMS).  By integrating the advisory services expertise of PHMI with PIMS’s expertise as the gateway for international patients, Partners has created a single, organized conduit through which international stakeholders will interact with our hospitals, institutes and experts across the system.

To coordinate this effort, Partners CEO Gary Gottlieb, MD has appointed Gilbert H. Mudge, Jr., MD as Vice President for International Programs. Dr. Mudge (in the photo to the right, talking to students) is a renowned cardiologist who has served at Brigham and Women’s Hospital since 1977. With more than 20 years of experience in the international sector, his expertise includes developing clinical sub-specialty programs, quality initiatives and educational programs throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

 The new, unified international division will maintain close linkages to Harvard Medical School and will serve as a gateway for our colleagues overseas who wish to develop joint clinical, educational and research collaborations. Our clients and collaborating partners will continue to draw upon the extensive resources of 44 departmental staff as well as the unparalleled expertise within Harvard’s largest teaching hospitals.  

These professional and intellectual resources will be augmented by greater access to the resources available within the Partners system, including significant expertise in network development and integration, specialty care, quality management, health information management systems, real estate development, and materials management.

Commenting on how these changes will impact international organizations seeking to collaborate with Partners, Dr. Mudge said, “Increasingly, we are fielding calls for collaboration from institutions whose long-term vision for high-performance medicine, workforce development, and community stewardship closely mirrors our own. While their interests align in obvious ways with the formerly separate missions of PHMI and PIMS, I can see new opportunities emerging to create cross-geographical collaborations focused on biomedical research, technology development, and humanitarian initiatives.”

Delivering the best health care increasingly requires the collective knowledge of leading clinicians and scientists from throughout the world.  With the strategic alignment of PHMI and PIMS complete, Partners HealthCare is now fully positioned to share our experiences, knowledge and resources with colleagues across the global medical community.

Collaboration with Asan Medical Center Improves Pediatric Care in South Korea

A renewed agreement between Asan Medical Center and Partners Harvard Medical International (PHMI) will provide opportunities for Partners HealthCare faculty-physicians and nurses to impact pediatric care in South Korea.
 
The 2,700-bed Asan Medical Center (AMC), founded in 1989, is one of the largest tertiary care hospitals in Korea. Asan has worked with PHMI since 1996 on a variety of initiatives to improve hospital performance and build professional capacity. Dozens of Asan physicians, nurses, and researchers have completed PHMI observership programs in Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospitals. PHMI and AMC have jointly organized and sponsored six biennial international symposia in Seoul that gathers thought leaders from the US, Korea and neighboring Asian countries to discuss the latest in cutting-edge research and practice.    
As Asan has developed into a top Korean tertiary care center, it has looked to PHMI and the Partners hospitals to help it benchmark its clinical services and continually improve quality of care. For example, clinical experts from Brigham & Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have worked on-site in Seoul to help Asan enhance its diabetes and oncology programs.

In March 2009, Asan Medical Center opened a 238-bed children’s hospital within the larger hospital system. With a year of service completed, Asan called upon PHMI to organize a collaboration that would enable the pediatrics team at Asan to measure their progress against a counterpart center in the Boston medical community.

A perfect match was made with the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children (MGHfC), itself a pediatric hospital located within the largest academic medical center in Boston. Last year, clinical leadership from the Asan Medical Center Children’s Hospital exchanged visits with their MGHfC counterparts – an interesting pairing of two “hospitals within hospitals.” More than 30 physicians, nurses, and administrators at MGHfC participated in the Asan delegation’s visit to MGHfC and provided the Asan delegation with a view of the inner workings of the hospital from every angle. A four-member faculty team from MGHfC, led by Physician-in-Chief Dr. Ronald Kleinman, later visited the Asan Medical Center Children’s Hospital to tour facilities and consult with Asan clinicians on best practices for pediatric medicine.

The work with MGHfC continues this year with a symposium in Seoul focused on pediatric nursing. Experts from Asan and MGHfC will present lectures and lead small-group discussions to address pediatric challenges and opportunities faced by nursing and administrative leaders in Korea and globally.

“This collaboration with a leading international academic medical center holds much promise for expanded opportunities throughout the Partners system,” said Michael Kavanagh, Associate Director of Global Programs at PHMI.
 
As the international collaboration arm of Partners HealthCare, Partners Harvard Medical International (PHMI) delivers strategic advice and project expertise to enable our clients to transform health care delivery, education, and research. PHMI has delivered programs and services in over 40 countries, with significant experience in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In collaboration with PHMI, our clients have led innovations in medical education, raised local and regional standards of health care delivery, gained national recognition for quality in health care and education, and trained and educated hundreds of health care professionals, faculty, and leaders. PHMI's programs around the world draw upon a wide range of intellectual and professional resources, notably the faculty of Harvard Medical School and its affiliated institutions, senior leaders and faculty from Partners HealthCare System, and international experts at other leading institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

Replacing "Kokobe" With Strength: New Haitian Center of Excellence for Rehabilitation and Education

Long before the January 2010 earthquake, Haiti’s Ministry of Health had pledged to improve orthopedic and rehabilitation services nationwide.

With stroke and diabetes on the rise, significant numbers of Haitians were acquiring disabilities midway through life, and the lack of public sector rehab services meant that these capable adults were no longer able to contribute to their communities. Outside the capital city Port-au-Prince, rehabilitation services were virtually nonexistent, and the unmet demand from patients was approaching a crisis level.

Further exacerbating this situation was the notion of "kokobe," a cultural stigma against disability that is deeply engrained in the Haitian psyche. To describe someone as "kokobe" is to say that he or she is utterly worthless, and this is the term that is often muttered following a stroke or a surgery.

Tackling the problem would require a two-pronged approach. First, new facilities – universally accessible facilities – would have to be built. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, a new generation of rehabilitation technicians would have to be educated. With no schools or permanent programs to teach rehabilitation skills, and a limited ability to attract foreign labor, there was no question that Haiti would have to staff up – immediately.  

With all of these factors at play, in 2009 the Ministry began working closely with staff from the Boston-based NGO Partners In Health (PIH) to identify an appropriate location for the development of orthopedic and rehabilitation services. After considering several options, a site was chosen: l’Hôpital St. Nicolas, a 110-bed facility located in St. Marc, a coastal town 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince.

After the quake

The St. Nicolas project was still at a nascent stage on January 12, 2010, when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, destroying most of the country’s healthcare infrastructure, and directly causing an estimated 150,000 disabilities.

Given that only 5-10% of Haiti’s disabled population had access to adequate medical care prior to the earthquake, the country’s post-disaster need for rehabilitation services was simply unfathomable.

“I remember donations pouring in from around the world,” recalls Dr. Patrick Almazor, an official with the Ministry of Health in St. Marc and a staff physician at Partners In Health. “Haiti’s medical community was awestruck by the generosity and compassion of our colleagues in other countries, yet at the same time we recognized that the earthquake’s ‘disability legacy’ would remain with us long after the disaster relief organizations had gone home. We knew we needed a Haitian solution to the problem of disability, but given its sheer scale, we recognized that an international partner would be critical to help guide the way.”

Within a few weeks, Dr. Almazor and his colleagues determined that the “partner” they were seeking was none other than Partners HealthCare. In response to their request, Partners created a coalition consisting of architects from the renowned Shepley Bulfinch firm as well as clinical experts from both the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network and the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Professions (MGH IHP).

“When the request came from Haiti, a voice inside me immediately said, ‘Yes!,’” explains Lori Matthews, Director of Global Programs at Partners International. “As an architect, I wanted to contribute to the relief effort in a meaningful way. Having seen video footage of collapsing buildings taking human lives, I knew that with proper construction, many deaths could have been prevented.”

Scheduled to open in March of 2012, the new Center of Excellence at l’Hôpital St. Nicolas (architectural rendering above) will become Haiti’s first universally accessible rehabilitation facility within the public health system, establishing new national standards for rehabilitative care and serving as a model for disability-centered design in the developing world. 

In addition to providing direct patient care, the Center will also serve as home to an innovative new initiative that will educate paraprofessional rehab technicians. The curriculum for this unique nine-month program was developed by Partners specialists from Spaulding and the MGH IHP, building upon materials previously developed by Health Volunteers Overseas.

“From our dedicated architectural team at Shepley Bulfinch to colleagues from multiple disciplines and departments across the Partners HealthCare network, everyone immediately embraced the St. Nicolas project at all levels,” said Matthews, looking back over 12 months of work on the project. “We were united by the project’s very powerful social message, as well as a real passion to help the Haitian people literally take recovery into their own hands.”