One more job for busy health-care expert is no problem

The new head of Penn's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics adds another title to his already impressive resume. As David Asch sits in his thin, high-backed Star Trek chair behind a desk in a spacious office decorated with photos of his 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter -- and their colorful paintings -- there isn't much that gives away exactly what he does for a living. There's a reason for that: The 40-year-old Asch doesn't just do one single thing. He teaches internal medicine and health-care economics at Penn. He heads a research department at the nearby Veterans' Affairs Medical Center, where he also practices internal medicine. He holds faculty appointments in the University's prestigious Center for Bioethics, Cancer Center and Institute on Aging, among others. He also does his own research on the hot-button issue of medical decision-making. And in July, he brought all of his diverse interests together when he added the title of executive director of Penn's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Even though there is a great deal of overlap in these positions, "I'm pretty busy right now," said Asch, who said he is getting home and going to sleep later and spending less time with his kids. He said the pressure will subside as soon as he is done settling in to his new job. "There's always that time when you're still trying to figure out where the bathroom is," he said. His colleagues are impressed with what they have seen from him so far. The associate director at the Davis Institute, Joanne Levy, said that while she thinks Asch is "still trying to figure out what needs to be done," his energy, organization and dry sense of humor give her the idea that "he'll be able to do it." And according to Arthur Caplan, the nationally renowned director of the Center for Bioethics, Asch's "rare and powerful skills," gained from his eclectic background, will make him an asset to the institute. "He has much experience as a clinician, a true command of useful social science skills and methods of inquiry and a feel and flair for the ethical and policy dimensions of health care," said Caplan, who is also a senior fellow at the institute. The 31-year-old Davis Institute brings top faculty together from University departments, ranging from medicine and health care management to communications and sociology, for research and education in economics- and ethics-related issues in health care. In his role as director of the institute -- which is based on Locust Walk in the Colonial Penn Center, which was once the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house -- Asch facilitates the research of more than 100 senior fellows and almost 50 adjunct senior fellows. The former group received more than $100 million in grants this year for their research. Since the institute's fellows come from such a wide range of departments and backgrounds, the multiple perspectives they get from each other make their research "that much more relevant, realistic and valuable," Asch said. Asch, a Manhattan native, still spends about one-fourth of his time doing direct patient care and teaching, and uses the rest of his time to do his own research and move the Health Services research mission at the VA Medical Center -- an academic affiliate of Penn's Health System -- where Asch sees all of his patients. The Cornell-trained doctor and Wharton MBA insists, though, that even in his new capacity at the institute, he is a physician first and businessperson second. In fact, at a medical conference a few weeks ago, he had to reintroduce himself to the panelists when he started talking about economics. "I'm actually a physician. I'm just an economist wannabe," he recalled saying. Asch, who majored in philosophy at Harvard, said his research interests lie in medical decision-making, especially in ethically charged, "trendy" issues -- like physicians' medical decisions under cost constraints, end-of-life care and genetic testing, to name a few. A specific type of research that Asch hopes to further is surveys that look into nurses' and physicians' attitudes and the health-care products and systems consumers want. He said that a big issue and source of tension in health care today is "balancing fiscal responsibility with the long-standing and incredibly important ethos of medical care: trying to do the best for individual patients." And Asch is well-suited for attacking these issues, Caplan said. "He is not afraid to inquire into topics that are controversial or unpopular, yet at the same time he is more than willing to listen and learn from others," Caplan said.

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