The mission of the Master of Health Care Delivery Science (MHCDS) Program at Dartmouth College is to equip leaders to transform the delivery of health care. The program, a collaboration between the Tuck School of Business and the Geisel School of Medicine, offers a 12-month low-residency master’s degree focused on health system transformation, leadership, and management for health care leaders.

An interdisciplinary endeavor, health care delivery science brings together concepts, methods and tools from medicine, the social sciences, public health, population health, engineering, and business with the goal of improving individual and community health while reducing waste and harm. Health care delivery science seeks to understand the ways in which health care systems may fail to address the needs and wants of their patients and communities, and to provide the new skills necessary for better management and leadership of health care organizations.

Aimed at an executive-level audience, the curriculum of the MHCDS program is guided by three overarching learning goals:

  • To enable students to envision the future of their organization in the evolving sectors of health and health care delivery;
  • To equip students to lead change in their organizational setting; and
  • To help students meet their own personal and professional development objectives.

Envisioning the future requires an understanding of value in health care, organizational strategy, population health, health economics and policy, and the importance of meeting patients’ goals. Leading change involves organizational behavior, negotiations, teamwork, and management as well as mastery of a health care organization’s functional areas, including finance, marketing, information technology and service operations. Professional development entails the application of these disciplines as well as individualized leadership coaching.

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. - Jim Yong Kim, MD past president of Dartmouth and catalyst for MHCDS