TEDxPhiladelphia runs Friday at Temple University in front of a sold-out crowd. The theme is Philadelphia as the New Workshop of the World. This is one of several Q&As with scheduled speakers.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Visionary, ambitious, and disruptor are just of few of the words that have been used to describe Dr. Stephen Klasko, the recently appointed president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and TJU Health System. But the list of adjectives would be incomplete without also including plainspoken,and even entertaining, both rare epithets for a hospital administrator.

A native of the Philadelphia-region, he previously served as the dean of the University of South Florida medical school where, during his nine-year tenure, he delivered on a controversial plan to turn that institution into a regional powerhouse. Before running USF Health, he was dean of Drexel Universitys College of Medicine.

Klasko has blazed a distinctive path through the realm of healthcare. He worked as a professional disc jockey before going to med school. He went into private practice, delivered 2,500 babies in Allentown, then got involved in academic medicine in a weird way, Klasko said. He had an epiphany provoked by hearing doctors, mostly men, talk about hysterectomies in ways women never would. That prompted him to get involved with the creation of new patient-friendly medical devices.

Later, in the 1990s, he had another epiphany after noticing how often doctors complained about how difficult it was to practice the business of medicine.

We had all these smart people whining, Klasko said. I thought if I can deliver a 9-pound baby through a small hole, I think I can figure this out.

So he enrolled at Wharton, earned his MBA, and along the way investigated what makes doctors different when it comes to adapting to change. Said Klasko: It led to some interesting theories.

See the rest here:

TEDx speaker Dr. Stephen Klasko: The future of medicine and Jefferson 3.0