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In This Issue:
Each summer, a distinguished and diverse group of residents participate in BWH training programs. This year, in a two-part series, BWH Bulletin spotlights a group of residents with unique experiences, backgrounds and talents.
For BWH residents Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, and Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, the last 18 months have been the experience of a lifetime as they worked in Washington, D.C., alongside key players who are shaping health care reform for the nation.
“I felt tremendous pride to represent the Brigham and be able to share my passion for patient care,” said Jain, a third-year resident in the Department of Internal Medicine.
In the middle of his second year of residency, Jain took a leave from the program to serve as a special assistant to former BWHer David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, national coordinator for Health Information Technology. He worked on the federal initiative to fund the national adoption of health information technology, before transitioning to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a senior advisor to Administrator Donald Berwick, MD. There, he worked on the launch of CMS’s innovation center, which will pilot and scale new models of health care delivery and payment.
Navathe, who joined BWH’s Internal Medicine residency program as a first-year resident this summer, spent his time in the nation’s capital as a medical officer in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. He managed the comparative effectiveness research portfolio that was established to compare the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor conditions.
“This experience gave me a first-hand look at how complicated the health care system is, but at the same time, I saw how a motivated group can affect change,” said Navathe, who trained in both medicine and health economics and policy at the School of Medicine and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He also worked in the Barack Obama presidential campaign as a member of the Health Policy Advisory Committee.
Both residents said one of the things they enjoyed most was being able to draw from their experiences to help the process of reshaping health care.
“At the end of the day, it’s about patients and providing them with the best possible care,” said Navathe.
When asked about his experience in Washington, D.C., Jain tells other residents this:
“It’s a place where you wake up every morning with a sense of possibility that you can do something great to change the world, and you go home frustrated that you didn’t accomplish everything that you thought you could have done. But you wake up the next morning feeling incredibly passionate about the possibility that this could be the day that you make a huge difference.”