Barbara Barnett GR'13, the associate chair of medicine and director of clinical operations at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, said she was at work about 15 years ago when she first realized just how scarce information on health care delivery had become. Barnett, now one of 47 students in the inaugural class of the master's in health care delivery science program operated through the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, said she enrolled in Dartmouth's graduate program in order to fill this knowledge gap.
"You leave medical school with very little understanding of the cost of medicine," she said. "You are never exposed to it. It's not something you talk about."
The 18-month master's program combines residential and online instruction intended to prepare students to transform health care delivery across the country, according to Katy Milligan Tu'07, the program's director. Those students, unlike those in many purely residential master's programs, are trained professionals from all sectors of the health care industry, Milligan said.
"We're looking for people who already are in positions of leadership," she said. "They can make an impact tomorrow with the things they've learned today."
Each of the 47 students in the inaugural class has on average 23 years of work experience, according to promotional materials distributed by the program. Of the students, 85 percent have advanced degrees and 65 percent ares care providers, including registered nurses and doctors.
Students' average age is 45 years old, Milligan said. The master's program which is also run through the Tuck School of Business and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice is funded through the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Deliver Science, which was created with a $35 million gift to the College in May 2010.
For the majority of the program, students remain at home while completing their assignments. Students participate in group discussions, listen to lectures and coordinate final projects online, Milligan said. Only four residential sessions bring the students to campus for one to two weeks at a time, according to Milligan.
Video conferencing sessions enable students to remain in contact with each other and their professors, according to Milligan. The program's collaborative nature is "integral" to its purpose and success, the Center's Director Al Mulley '70 said. "The problems will not be solved unless you bring together the best thinkers from across disciplines," Mulley said. "We're not here solely to advance the academics of health care delivery science, we're here to promote and instruct change. The best thinkers have to be connected to the best doers."
This term, students are taking a class titled Finance Essentials for Leaders in Health Care Delivery, having previously studied the Science of Healthcare Delivery and Leveraging Data to Inform Decision Making, according to Milligan. Two courses, Personal Leadership and Action Learning, are required for all degree recipients and are completed over the course of the 18-month program. Milligan teaches the Action Learning class, which requires students to form five-person teams and create a project that improves the business and clinical practices of an external organization. Students are expected to implement these projects with the help of a faculty advisor, Milligan said. Each Sunday evening, students receive assignments and lectures for the coming week, Michael Lachenmayer GR'13 said. While receiving his master's through the program, Lachenmayer also works as the director of business process optimization at AmeriHealth Administrators, a third-party health care administrator located in Philadelphia.
The class splits into two sections for live video conferences to discuss the material on Tuesdays. Individual assignments are due on Thursdays and students submit group assignments over the weekend, Lachenmayer said.
The online portions of the program still feel "real," Tara Laumenede GR'13, Long Island Jewish Medical Center's nursing director, said.
"You're sitting in half these people's living rooms or bedrooms," she said. "We see each other's faces."
Yasmine Winkler GR'13, senior vice president of product and innovation for UnitedHealthcare, emphasized how technology has changed since she attended college several decades ago. Such development has been the impetus for some students' decision to enroll in the master's program, she said.
"When I was in college, there was no internet," she said. "[Now students] connect multiple times every week."
The ability to take advantage of various technological innovations provides students with "incredible mobility," Winkler said. The program's flexible schedule also enables many students most of whom work during the day and therefore have limited availability to participate in the degree program, Lachenmayer said.
Lachenmayer said he originally considered the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School which includes a health care management department but the opportunity to work from home and retain his job swayed him toward Dartmouth's program.
Lachenmayer said his peers are some of the program's best resources.
Thirty-three students come from health care industry organizations that sent their employees to get their master's degree in "teams," the program's promotional materials said.
Approximately half of the students' employers have sponsored their enrollment in the program, Milligan said. The Long Island Jewish Medical Center, for example, has paid for some of its employees to participate in the Dartmouth program.
"Our chief executive officer, Chantal Weinhold, really believes this is needed," Barnett said. "She encourages us, she gives us time off to attend. She's financially paying this, because she thinks this is needed to improve heath care delivery."
Administrators are working to recruit students for next year's incoming class which will begin in Hanover next summer, Milligan said.
"We reach out to organizations that we think are receptive to this kind of education," she said.
Laumenede said physicians and nurses have approached her at work to express interest in attending the program in the future. Mulley said he hopes the program will continue to gain recognition in health-care-related organizations, clinics and hospitals.
"It's going to take a while for all of health care to know about what we're doing at Dartmouth," Mulley said. "We will continue to have the conversations we had last year, but we know organizations who send students and teams of students who did so this year will do so next year."
Increased interest in and knowledge of the program will likely make the degree program "increasingly competitive" in the future, Mulley said.
