PHILADELPHIA — Lessons in organizational change management, team-building, and negotiation are on the agenda in a new program designed to fortify leaders in academic medicine and health care for success in an uncertain environment for the field. Penn Medicine and Wharton Executive Education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania are joining forces to launch an executive health care leadership program that will offer participants a strategic toolkit to cement their ability to lead at a time when science, technology, and economics are reshaping the practice of medicine and altering the field’s economic landscape.
J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD
The program, known as “Leadership in a New Era of Health Care,” is designed for senior-level leaders in health care and academic medicine – doctors, nurses, scientists, and executives – from across the world. Beginning with its first four-day course in March 2019, the program will provide participants with targeted leadership development experiences and practical skills to drive visionary change in their organizations.
“A commitment to innovation is at the core of everything we do at Penn Medicine, and we’re dedicated to instilling that same passion for improvement and evolution in our approach to leadership,” said J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and dean of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. “Health care leaders today need a broader skill set: they must be strong negotiators, keen students of business, and have the emotional intelligence necessary to lead diverse teams who are evolving our approaches to patient-centric care and ensuring that our health systems continue to thrive in an era of some uncertainty for our field.”
Leadership in a New Era of Health Care will be led by faculty from both Wharton and Penn Medicine. Presenters will include deans and CEOs from the nation’s top academic medical centers, chairs of large clinical departments, nursing leaders, and senior executives who have built dynamic academic-industry partnerships and overseen transformative new facility projects. Participants will also learn from renowned organizational development and conflict resolution experts.
Jagmohan S. Raju
“Wharton Executive Education excels at providing a holistic approach to leadership development,” said professor Jagmohan S. Raju, vice dean of Wharton Executive Education. “The US spends more than 18% of its GDP on Healthcare and nearly 1 in every 8 Americans are employed in this sector. Today’s health care sector requires leaders who are interdisciplinary thinkers with the capability to envision the future, and this program is going to help them do just that.”
Participants will have the opportunity to develop advanced leadership skills through a combination of interactive workshops and dynamic presentations. Areas of focus will include organizational and cultural change, negotiation and conflict resolution, relationship management, coalition-building, communication, and strategic decision-making. The program is also designed to support quick-start change management: through a unique, real-time health care challenge, participants will get feedback from peers and faculty to help tackle their most pressing on the job issues and be prepared to initiate new plans when they return to their institutions.
Caryn Lerman, PhD
“We need to help our health care leaders stay agile, and build their capacity to pivot and respond strategically to changes in the field, from new digital health advances to changes in reimbursement,” said Caryn Lerman, PhD, vice dean for Strategic Initiatives in the Perelman School of Medicine and John H. Glick Professor in Cancer Research. “Today’s academic medicine leaders and health care executives are highly knowledgeable and motivated. We’ve designed this program to leverage those qualities and arm them with the high-impact skills required to drive real change in the organizations they lead.”
The program builds on ideas Lerman and Jameson outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine in June 2018, when they called on academic health systems to make leadership development an organizational priority – an emphasis that they say will also pay off in improved patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes.
For more information, visit WhartonPennMedLeadership.com.
Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. With a broad global community and one of the most published business school faculties, Wharton creates economic and social value around the world. The School has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 13,000 participants in executive education programs annually; and a powerful alumni network of 98,000 graduates.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.