Who Can Fix Health Care? TEDx Talk @Dartmouth

Who Can Fix Health Care? - That's the question posed by Dr. Al Mulley. director of the Center for Health Care Delivery Science at Dartmouth College. Its also the title of the TEDx Talk he just gave, and its the kind of talk that you can't help but want everyone to see.

For those of you who have followed this column, Al Mulley, the Center and Dartmouth are familiar. This author works for the masters degree program associated with the center, the Master of Health Care Delivery Science Program.

Al's talk is worth watching for a number of reasons. To begin with he has had a distinguished clinical career, most recently heading the internal medicine department at Massachusetts General Hospital. Currently he leads the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, a new department in a new discipline that will soon be emulated at institutions around the globe. He's a great speaker. And he's also a smart guy who really cares; a consummate intellectual in the best sense of the word.

Among the concepts covered are what might be called Mulley's Four Goals For Quality Healthcare:

1.  Provide patients with the care they need and no less and the care they want and no more

2. No decision about health and health care should be made in the face of avoidable ignorance

3. Every decision about health and health care should be informed by both professional and personal knowledge

4. Patients must shape the capacity of the health care system by revealing their preferences

It wouldn't be an overstatement to pronounce the talk a must-see for those interested in healthcare reform, or who believe that healthcare needs some, well, caring-for. And also for those wondering what the heck they can do to help. The audience was Dartmouth College students, but it might as well have been the entire country. With that in mind, do yourself a favor and watch it. Here' I've made it easy: