President Charles M. Vest has announced plans to form a Task Force on Health Care for the MIT Community. The task force will be asked to take a broad look at health care provided at MIT and to make recommendations about the provision of medical services to the Institute community.
The group's work is intended to complement an intensive effort by the MIT Medical Department to assess its operations and services in the context of changes in the health care environment nationally and the changing needs of the MIT community. As part of this work by the Medical Department, a data-gathering effort now under way will provide a better understanding of the use of the various services by different groups, as well as the costs and revenues associated with these services.
The Medical Department had been given a budget reduction target for the coming fiscal year of $3 million, but Executive Vice President John Curry has since informed Medical Director William Kettyle that--pending the recommendations of the task force--there will be no further cuts in the Medical Department budget for the coming year beyond the $1.5 million in cuts already identified.
Vest and Kettyle said they expected the membership of the task force to be filled and initial meetings held before the end of the spring term.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 14, 2004.
