Wharton offers a full portfolio of executive development programs that are specifically targeted to health care professionals. Many of these programs have been developed in partnership with some of today’s most respected health care organizations and influential associations. These programs attract key health care executives from around the world, providing participants with a global perspective and a highly energized, dynamic learning experience.
Learn how health care professionals who attend Wharton programs:
- Advance their health care leadership skills
- Build strategic expertise in change management
ADVANCE YOUR Health Care LEADERSHIP SKILLS
Leadership that is based on expert knowledge and accelerating the development of high-potential executives is more important than ever in the health care sector. Wharton programs prepare health care leaders to guide their organizations through the many challenges of a changing health care landscape, and to make a lasting impact through expert, innovative leadership.
- Advanced Management Program (AMP) — Executive Education’s flagship program, AMP, offers top-level health care executives an intensive and transformational five-week in-residence learning experience. Wharton faculty challenges these executives’ approach to innovating, developing, manufacturing, and marketing new medicines, vaccines, devices, and health care services to ensure they apply research-based rigor and discipline, while emphasizing corporate governance, ethics, financial, political, and social risk management. Through small-group work, case study and discussion, class peers share experience from their respective business disciplines and vertical industries to compare and contrast best practices across geographies. AMP addresses which managerial levers directly impact operational results and which metrics serve as the best proxy for value creation. The program deeply explores strategy during times of market clarity and ambiguity, organic growth, joint venture, or merger and acquisition. AMP applies practical tools such as discovery-driven planning, scenario planning, and real options to prepare for the next market turn and financial risk management strategies that enable the possibilities of the future while mitigating downside exposure.
- Executive Development Program — Wharton’s two-week Executive Development Program provides health care managers with the core business knowledge and organizational understanding to take on broader leadership responsibilities and add more value to their organizations. Faculty cover key knowledge in areas such as finance, marketing, leadership, and strategy based on current research and best practices. Executives in the program also gain an appreciation of the complexities of organizational dynamics, effective communication strategies, and leadership. Finally, a hands-on strategy simulation draws it all together by exploring different management styles, tools, and organization-wide strategic approaches.
- Strategic Persuasion Workshop: The Art and Science of Selling Ideas — Recent market shifts in the health care industry have triggered mergers and major reorganizations in the industry. This program provides health care professionals with strategies for removing obstacles to alignment, more effectively communicating their ideas, assembling winning coalitions, building credibility, increasing self-awareness, and negotiating win-win deals. The program is complementary to the book The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin), co-authored by the two academic directors, Wharton Professor G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa, senior fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Care Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
- High-Potential Leaders: Accelerating Your Impact —With rapidly changing markets shaping the landscape of the industry, health care organizations must accelerate the development of their leaders to be prepared for the challenges ahead. This program offers high-potential leaders a solid grounding in strategic business skills and the ability to translate that knowledge into an action plan that defines where they and their organization are going. Participants learn to build a solid leadership foundation based on their strengths and values, master the strategic business skills that global leaders need most, optimize potential and accelerate career progression, make strategic decisions, lead change, and motivate people to achieve results. The program culminates with an action plan to achieve both short-term and long-term results.
- Penn Executive Veterinary Leadership Program: Making an Impact as Public Health Leaders — The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has partnered with Wharton to create this leadership program that prepares veterinarians for making a greater contribution as change agents in public health. The program customizes leadership development to the challenges veterinarians face in the current environment. Led by Wharton and University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine faculty, the program examines the current state of veterinary medicine from a business context, rebranding the profession, challenges and opportunities in the profession, veterinary public health, the future of animal health, working across boundaries, critical thinking, and strategic influence and persuasion. Participants develop group and individual action plans for post-program development.
- Wharton Nurse Leaders Program — Addressing the complex issues facing nurse managers with multi-unit fiscal and managerial responsibilities, this program equips nurse leaders with the strategic and tactical expertise they need as senior-level executives. From a focus on refining financial skills and critical analysis to enhancing the ability to manage resources and optimize clinical and administrative performance, this program draws on the expertise of faculty with vast experience in working with senior clinician executives.
Industry-Sponsored Programs
- Wharton/Windhover Program for Pharmaceutical and Biotech Executives — Led by CEOs, top researchers and drug developers, senior marketing executives, policy and pricing experts, industry deal-makers, and Wharton faculty, this program offers the best of both worlds: academic insights of health care management faculty and industry analysts with the practical experience of senior drug company executives. Within the context of key industry functions, such as discovery, marketing, finance, and business development, the program addresses the management implications of new techniques in drug discovery, marketing and pricing in the current environment, financial evaluation and deals, and mergers and alliances.
- J&J/Wharton Fellows Program in Management for Nurse Executives — This program prepares nurse executives to think more strategically, better manage the complexities of today’s multi-layered organizational systems, refine their leadership strengths, and become a full partner in policy and planning issues. With significant emphasis on building quantitative skills and decision-making, sessions focus on the latest approaches to financial planning, examine finance in the context of the broader issues related to the economics of health care, and prepare nurse executives for building and maintaining alliances and maximizing use of current management approaches. Nurse leaders who attend this program will be well prepared to engage in the most senior-level decision-making.
- CHIEF EXECUTIVE OPTOMETRIST™ — This program uses real-world case studies and best practices to highlight the benefits of applying critical thinking, leadership, marketing strategies, organizational logic, and financial analysis principles to building a successful practice. Optometrists and ophthalmologists will learn to manage their staff and their overall business more efficiently and effectively while increasing their overall profitability.
BUILD EXPERTISE IN Health Care CHANGE MANAGEMENT
With emerging markets such as China, India, Russia and Brazil gaining ground in the health care sector and issues such as managed care reimbursement, increased regulatory oversight, and talent pipeline concerns applying increasing pressure on health care organizations, it is more difficult than ever to compete successfully in today’s markets. Wharton’s executive development programs prepare health care leaders with the latest business research and market knowledge to address these challenges and capitalize on the opportunities in the new global marketplace.
- Creating and Leading High-Performing Teams — Based on key insights from the current research and case studies, this program educates executives about building team in hands-on experiential learning — from rowing crew shells to participating in the performing arts. In a distinctive combination of in-classroom case work and experiential exercises, the program gives participants the opportunity to learn how to form and sustain a successful team, align individuals around group goals, understand team dynamics, and lead from the front, middle, and behind. In addition to presentations from Wharton faculty and Wharton Leadership Ventures, senior guest speakers offer experiences from business, the military, and other areas.
- Leading Organizational Change — Based on specific challenges or projects that participants bring with them, this hands-on workshop equips health care professionals with specific action plans for leading change in their organizations. The program addresses the change process, highlights the role of leadership in change, and examines culture and congruence, politics and power, and change implementation. Participants also learn about stakeholder models, work systems models, levers of change, and how to overcome obstacles to change in their organizations.
- Critical Thinking: Real-World, Real-Time Decisions — Making decisions in an atmosphere of market shifts, increasing time pressure, and conflicting expert opinions creates challenges for any health care services professional. Critical Thinking focuses on reframing issues so that the right problems are addressed, distinguishing systematic patterns from random events, and identifying acceptable risks in alternative decisions. This program examines the process of making better decisions within group or department settings, recognizing the more network-oriented and decentralized organizational structures of today's companies.
- Full-Spectrum Innovation: Driving Organic Growth — In a workshop format, this program uses group dialogues, interactive lectures, case studies, and projects from participants to provide a hands-on experience in redesigning the process of innovation within participants’ health care organizations. The curriculum showcases best practices in innovation from companies such as P&G, while addressing how to develop a market-driven innovation strategy, understand new-product successes and failures, improve “peripheral vision” to anticipate emerging opportunities, and engage in value innovation for capitalizing on new market space.
- Leading and Managing People — This program offers health care professionals the opportunity to challenge their assumptions about leadership and how they influence employees. Participants examine their management objectives and leadership style, and then experiment with new approaches and behaviors. Faculty and fellow executives provide constructive feedback and insights during applied learning sessions. Health care professionals who attend gain specific action steps for resolving current and future management challenges.
- Mergers and Acquisitions — As new market forces shape the future of health care, mergers and acquisitions play a central role in the transformation of the industry. This program draws upon the expertise of an interdisciplinary team of faculty who lead health care participants in determining the rationale for mergers or acquisitions, selecting the appropriate targets, valuing them, and evaluating the long-term potential of the partnership. Participants learn to identify their acquisition strategies, bring the deal to a close, and address integration issues. In addition to Finance faculty, the program draws on Wharton Management, Legal Studies, and Accounting departments, as well as other experts in the field. In case studies, computer simulations, and interactions with high-level health care peers, participants learn to execute M&As from start to finish.
- Strategic Alliances — Alliances between vendors and companies are more critical than ever to success in the health care industry; forming alliances can give companies access to new markets, technologies, and other resources. Alliances can also help companies to better manage change and hedge risks. This program looks at the process of building alliances from a global approach. Many of the cases are drawn from international examples. Participants learn how alliances contribute to competitive advantage, and how to analyze the fit among partners. They examine how to select the right alliance structure, build mutual commitment, address conflict, negotiate alliances for advantage, and protect their own strategic position while establishing global strategic positions.
Learn about our custom solutions in the Executive Learning Solutions for Organizations section.