What is Health Care Delivery Science?
The gap between research and implementation underscores the importance of health care delivery science: an interdisciplinary field dedicated to optimizing how care is delivered to improve patient outcomes and system efficiency.
Defining Health Care Delivery Science
Health care delivery science focuses on the study of systems, processes, leadership, and management to enhance the delivery of health care and the health of populations. It integrates concepts and methods from medicine, social sciences, public health, engineering, and business to improve individual and community health while reducing waste and harm.
Unlike traditional clinical research, which often centers on developing new treatments, health care delivery science emphasizes the how of care—ensuring that existing therapies and interventions are effectively and efficiently implemented across diverse health care settings.
The Importance of Health Care Delivery Science Today
Despite medical and technological advances, health care systems continually struggle providing innovative, preference-sensitive care. Modern health care faces complex challenges, including rising costs, disparities in access and outcomes, and inefficiencies in care delivery. Health care delivery science offers tools and frameworks to address these issues through system-level interventions and evidence-based strategies.
For instance, the Mayo Clinic's Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery employs implementation science to integrate evidence-based practices into routine care, enhancing patient experiences and outcomes. Dartmouth's Health Care Delivery Science program features Action Learning Projects, where students tackle real-world challenges within their own organizations. In one case, a student-developed framework optimized revenue cycles at a critical access hospital, reversing financial losses and improving community care while offering a scalable model for rural health systems nationwide.
Health Care Delivery Science at Dartmouth
Dartmouth College has played a pivotal role in shaping health care delivery science. In the 1970s, Dr. John E. Wennberg's research exposed wide geographic variations in medical practices across the U.S., challenging the notion that care was consistently evidence-based. His findings led to the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, a key resource that highlights disparities in care delivery and outcomes and informs national health policy.
Building upon this foundation, Dartmouth established The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice to integrate interdisciplinary research and education into innovative models for delivering high-quality, cost-effective care. This vision to educate health care professionals who could carry out the systemic change needed to transform health care delivery led to the Master of Health Care Delivery Science (MHCDS) at Dartmouth College.
The MHCDS program equips clinicians and health executives with cross-disciplinary tools and training to navigate complex health care environments. Its curriculum merges business acumen, policy insight, and leadership development, delivered through a blended online and on-campus format. Students leverage a personal and intimate educational experience to gather insights from peers across the industry, while simultaneously applying impactful lessons in health care delivery to their workplaces in real time.
The problems of health care throughout the world are not primarily ones of medical knowledge or even political will—they are problems of effective management and execution.”
Former president of Dartmouth College and catalyst for MHCDS