Can faculty in academic medical centers really work together as teams?

Richard Krugman, M.D., first vice chancellor for health affairs for the University of Colorado Denver, says working together cans help solve the health care crisis.

Transcript

I've only been dean for 22 years. I'm the longest standing dean. Whenever I sit down, I'm the longest sitting dean. I've lived through two health care reforms, in the '90s, and again now. What's really important now is that we all work together. What I've learned is that you have to bring people together toward a common mission.

It's now explicit in the letters of offer for our chairs that they have to work with each other, with me and with the hospital directors to make all of us as good as we can be. It's not good enough anymore to have the top five department of surgery or medicine or pediatrics in the country if everybody else isn't part of the team. And it's not intuitive for all of us to do that, but we have to be working together if we're going to survive.