New members join CHOT

(COLLEGE STATION, TX) – The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded funding to Northeastern University in Boston to become a partner university in the Center for Health Organization Transformation (CHOT) with the Texas A&M Health Science Center and Georgia Tech University.

Dr. James Benneyan, a professor in the Northeastern University College of Engineering, will now serve as an associate director of CHOT. He looks forward to contributing to the CHOT mission by focusing specifically on engineering improvement methods in health care.

“We want to do for health care what the Toyota Production System, Six Sigma, quality management and industrial engineering did for the automobile and other industries,” Dr. Benneyan said.

With its admittance, Northeastern University brings in four new health system partners to CHOT: Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and New England Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. Dr. Benneyan anticipates a number of other Boston-area and neighboring health systems will join the center soon.

Dr. Larry Gamm, CHOT director and professor in the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, is delighted to welcome Northeastern University and the Boston health system members to the center.

“Dr. Benneyan, his colleagues and the participating Boston health systems are valuable additions to CHOT,” Dr. Gamm said. “The center will benefit from their expertise in health management, health engineering methods and quality health delivery.”

The new additions bring CHOT’s numbers to three universities and 15 health systems engaged in center research.

“These numbers are expected to increase within the next year and continually add to CHOT’s research contributions to transformation in health care on multiple levels,” Dr. Gamm said.