Press Release

James N. Weinstein to Receive AHA Justin Ford Kimball Innovators Award

The American Hospital Association (AHA) today announced that the Justin Ford Kimball Innovators Award will be awarded to James N. Weinstein, DO, MS, CEO and president, Dartmouth-Hitchcock health system based in Lebanon, N.H. The award recognizes people or organizations that have developed or introduced an influential, innovative approach to health care financing and/or health care delivery to improve access or coordination of care. Weinstein will receive the award at a ceremony at the AHA Annual Membership Meeting on Monday, May 8 in Washington, D.C.

As the organization’s first CEO and president, Weinstein has led care integration throughout the organization and, in reaching out to rural facilities, has moved toward a coordinated area-wide care continuum. Immediately prior to becoming CEO in 2011, Weinstein served as president of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic and was director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI). His dual positions allowed him to build critical linkages between the groundbreaking health services research and clinical care, with a focus on better understanding and meeting the population health needs of the region.

“Jim is an innovator, whose leadership has inspired the hospital field and improved health in his state,” said AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack. “Under his leadership Dartmouth-Hitchcock has embraced population health management developing innovative collaborations that are leading to improved access, lower costs, higher quality and better outcomes.”

Weinstein’s leadership extends outside of Dartmouth-Hitchcock. Nationally, he is executive director and a founding member of the national High Value Healthcare Collaborative, a partnership of more than a dozen health systems focused on improving the quality of care while lowering costs. The Collaborative allows for unprecedented data sharing, including electronic medical record data from each system and the collection of patient reported measures. Weinstein has been a pioneer in information choice for patients – creating the first Center for Shared Decision Making more than a decade ago – and in sharing outcomes, including patient-reported outcomes, to improve care.

Weinstein will retire as CEO and president in June of 2017, but will remain as the Peggy Y. Thomson Chair in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. An orthopaedic spine surgeon, Weinstein will continue to hold academic and clinical positions at the hospital and medical school, and will continue his national work with the High Value Healthcare Collaborative, the National Academy of Medicine Board for Population Health and the VA Special Medical Advisory Group.

About the AHA

The AHA is a not-for-profit association of health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the health improvement of their communities. The AHA is the national advocate for its members, which include nearly 5,000 hospitals, health care systems, networks, other providers of care and 43,000 individual members. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends. For more information, visit the AHA website at www.aha.org.