Yale Healthcare Conference to Address Managing Costs and Quality in a System Facing Reform

New Haven, Conn., March 30, 2009 – “Where is the Value? Managing Cost and Quality in a Healthcare System Facing Reform,” the fifth annual healthcare conference presented by the Yale School of Management and the health professions schools at Yale University, will be held at the Omni New Haven Hotel, 155 Temple Street, on Friday, April 3.

This year’s conference will focus on the theme of value in the healthcare system and explore issues surrounding how to provide better care to more patients while keeping costs under control, innovative public and private solutions to this problem, and the opportunities and challenge that potential healthcare reform may bring.

Dr. Samuel Nussbaum, Executive Vice President of Clinical Health Policy and Chief Medical Officer of WellPoint, Inc., will present the opening keynote at 9:30 a.m.; Helen Darling, President of the National Business Group on Health, will present the closing address at 4:15 p.m.

An executive panel will discuss how healthcare reform may affect physician compensation at 1:00 p.m. The panelists are: Dr. Henry Cabin, Chief of Clinical Cardiology, Cardiovascular Medicine, Yale University; Dr. Samuel Nussbaum, Executive Vice President, Clinical Health Policy and Chief Medical Officer, WellPoint, Inc.; Dr. Patrick O’Connor, Professor of Medicine and Chief of General Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine and Yale-New Haven Hospital; with moderator Dr. Robert Galvin, Director of Global Healthcare, General Electric.
Throughout the day, industry practitioners will lead a series of 16 breakout sessions on topics within the conference theme including: medical tourism, preventive healthcare; alternative medicine; government-sponsored insurance versus private insurance; information technology and web-based innovations in healthcare; care disparities in underrepresented minority communities; pay for performance; solutions for the aging baby boomer generation; the pricing of biologic therapies and pharmaceuticals; and challenges employers face in providing healthcare coverage to employees.

The full conference schedule, list of presenters, and registration is available on the conference website: http://www.yalehealthcare.com.

The conference is sponsored in part by CIGNA, The Donaghue Foundation, Emergent Biosolutions, Aetna, Boehringer Ingelheim, and The Chartis Group.

Members of the media are invited to attend with advance registration. For press registration, contact Tabitha Wilde, Director of Media Relations, Yale School of Management, tabitha.wilde@yale.edu, 203-432-6010.