Senator-elect Scott Brown is off to Washington D.C. Thursday, although it is unclear how soon he will be sworn in to the U.S. Senate.

Brown announced in a press conference Wednesday morning that he would head to the nation’s capitol for a ‘courtesy call’ to meet with other Massachusetts congressmen and the Republican leadership.

‘I look forward to getting to work right away and dealing with all the important challenges we have before us,’ Brown said, adding that he hoped he would be seated on the basis of unofficial election returns from the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office.

However, Senate staff said Wednesday that Brown will have to wait for an official certification of the results before being seated, a process that could take up to two weeks, according to The State House News Service.

Some political forecasters have raised the possibility of the Democratic leadership in Congress attempting to rush the passage of health care reform legislation before Brown is instated.

Since Tuesday’s election, however, top Democrats including the president have come out against that idea.

‘The people of Massachusetts spoke,’ President Barack Obama said in an interview with ABC News. ‘He’s got to be part of that process.’

At the press conference, Brown said he wanted to bring health care reform ‘back to the drawing board,’ and said he would look to his home state’s health care system as a model for the nation.

‘We already have 98 percent of our people insured here. We know what we need to do to fix it,’ Brown said. ‘To attempt the one-size-fits-all plan that’s being promoted nationally doesn’t work.’

Brown said he would not forget about keeping the best interests of the Bay State in mind when he arrives in D.C.

‘We need to look out for Massachusetts first,’ he said. ‘The thing I’m hearing all throughout the state is ‘what about us?’

Brown also fielded questions from the press about where he would fall in the ideological spectrum of the Republican caucus in the Senate.

‘I’m going to be a Scott Brown Republican,’ he said. ‘Maybe there’s a new breed of Republican coming to Washington.’

While Brown listed health care, taxes, terrorism and spending as issues that were important to him, he declined to name a priority initiative just yet.

‘I think people need to give me a chance to do a little of a transition,’ he said. ‘To say how I’m going to do this or not do this I think is really not appropriate right now.’

Later in the afternoon, Gov. Deval Patrick held his own press conference at the Statehouse to discuss the lessons learned from Brown’s ‘decisive’ and ‘well-organized’ victory over Attorney General Martha Coakley.

‘What I hear is frustration with the pace and sometimes even with the nature of the decision-making in government,’ Patrick said. ‘It is a worthwhile thing and an important thing for all of us that wish to serve to make sure that what we are doing from a policy perspective is what people need.’

Brown commented on this frustration in his press conference as well.

‘The number one thing I’ve heard is that people are tired of business as usual,’ he said, citing deals that have taken place behind closed doors during the health care legislation negociations. ‘Things like that just drive people crazy.’

Patrick, who denied the result of the Senate election would cause him to second-guess his decision to run for a second term in November, did manage to find some positives in the Republican victory, especially in Brown’s style of campaigning.

‘It is affirming how important it is to go out and ask people to engage in their government and in their civic lives and I think they’ve shown that they respond to that,’ he said. ‘I think he is right that the other part of what has to change is our politics and that means it has to be a more inclusive, more outward-focused kind of politics.’

On his Twitter page, Obama had a message for his supporters in the wake of Tuesday’s potential blow to his agenda.

‘Yesterday’s election shows discontent with the pace of change – a frustration I share,’ Obama said. ‘We must move forward and keep working together.’