Forging a team
July 1999 — Nathan celebrates the return to Dana-Farber of Einar Gustafson — the original "Jimmy" of the Jimmy Fund — with Red Sox great Ted Williams.
The team approach was evident in the response to Nathan's first challenge as president: to restore patients' and the public's confidence in the Institute by finding ways to reduce the chances of medication errors. A multidisciplinary group of physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and computer experts devised a medication-ordering system with built-in safeguards against overdoses — a system that has become a model for hospitals around the country.
That project provided just a hint of collaborations to come. In 1996, the Institute announced the formation of Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare (DF/PCC), a joint program in adult oncology among Dana-Farber, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. Modeled on the Institute's 50-year relationship with Children's Hospital, the venture involved the transfer of Dana-Farber's adult inpatient beds to Brigham and Women's (where they remain under Danawas Farber's license) and the construction of larger, state-of-the-art outpatient clinics at the Institute. The venture — something of an exception to the trend of hospital mergers and acquisitions — has brought a larger, more diverse group of patients to the Institute and enabled more of them to be enrolled in clinical trials.
As DF/PCC was taking shape, the Institute was creating a new administrative structure for its basic research activities. The aim: increase the opportunities for cooperation among investigators in related fields of study. In place of the old system of 23 divisions and independent laboratories, Dana-Farber's labs and clinics were grouped into five, broad departments. The Institute also opened a faculty common room where physicians and researchers could talk informally and share ideas.
