How MHCDS is Built for Success

Designed with Intention

As accomplished leaders, our students have 23 average years of work experience. Seventy-five percent work on the front lines of care delivery, in hospitals, health systems, and clinics. Ninety percent hold advanced degrees (e.g., MD, PhD, MBA, MS, and JD).

The MHCDS program was established and launched at Dartmouth College in 2011. Before the first cohort took their seats there was a significant and thoughtful body of work put in by the faculties at the Tuck School of Business and the Geisel School of Medicine. Their goal was to develop a new degree and a new field of inquiry that applied the discipline of science to improving health care delivery. 

Before the effort launched, Jim Yong Kim, MD, then the new president of Dartmouth and the catalyst for this new degree program, set out his two-pronged vision. First, the Master of Health Care Delivery Science was to be taught to leaders in health care who could immediately implement new methods and knowledge gained from the coursework to improve health delivery.  Second, the degree, the first online offered by Dartmouth, was to be every bit as intimate and rigorous as any other [residential] degree program offered by the school.

In order to meet that vision, a small cross-institutional task-force was deployed to develop the program through the following process:

  1. Establish the exact skills and knowledge health care leaders need to succeed in a changing health care environment. 
  2. Recruit the best faculty from across Dartmouth, the best teachers and researchers from the Tuck School of Business and the Geisel School of Medicine. 
  3. Select the best students, a cross section of accomplished physicians, executives, and other leaders in the health care industry who will not only learn, but also teach each other and the faculty through their practical experience. 
  4. Design the delivery of the coursework and around the needs of students with significant professional and personal responsibilities.
  5. Create a community of like-minded individuals, diverse in function and knowledge, but united in the quest to improve health care delivery for all. 
  • Class of 2019

    Candice Halinski, MSN, NP-C, MHCDS

    Director, Service Line, Clinical Division of Nephrology
    Northwell Health

    "The realization that I could transform my career away from the bedside while still caring for patients led me to apply to the MHCDS program. I knew that the world class education offered through the Dartmouth program would give me the fundamental tools I needed to promote, support, and lead change in the delivery of health care."

Learn More About the MHCDS Program