Robert Barclay Fetter was born in Berwyn, Illinois, in 1924. In 1947, he was awarded a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Afterward, he went on to receive both an M.B.A. and a D.B.A. from Indiana University, in 1949 and 1952, respectively. From 1953 to 1958 Fetter worked as an assistant professor of industrial management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1958, Fetter arrived at Yale University as an associate professor of industrial management, the first of a series of faculty and administrative posts he would assume at the university, including the Harold J. Hines, Jr. professorship in health care management and the chairmanship of the Yale University School of Organization and Management.
The professional accomplishment for which Fetter is most widely known is the development of Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), a conceptual framework which helps to define the "products" of a hospital. The DRG system identifies these products based on the characteristics of patients receiving comparable services. For Fetter, DRGs held the possibility of improving cost accounting, budgeting, and quality controls in hospitals. The application of DRGs in the United States, including their use as the basis of Medicare claims, led to international demand for more knowledge about their possibilities for hospitals in other parts of the world. Fetter's expertise in the development of DRGs regularly took him to meetings and conferences in different countries.
Fetter retired from the faculty at Yale in 1989.
From the guide to the Robert Barclay Fetter papers, 1978-1989, (Manuscripts and Archives)
