Nick Fabrizio PhD, FACMPE, FACHE, is a principal consultant with the MGMA Health Care Consulting Group and serves on the faculty at Cornell University’s Sloan Program in Health Administration, where he has also served as the executive in residence. His primary expertise is in physician practice management and managing complex physician-hospital relationships.
Strategic Healthcare Leadership
Overview and Courses
A smartly designed, well-executed strategic plan is indispensable not only to an organization’s long-term success, but to its very survival. Today’s healthcare leaders need to lead their organizations and be able to strategically drive initiatives that interact with multiple affiliated entities. Whether you are a senior leader looking to refine your strategic skills or an early to mid-level healthcare professional aspiring to a strategic position, leading strategic initiatives will be key your growth and success as a leader.
The Strategic Healthcare Leadership Certificate provides you with the critical skills you need to lead strategic initiatives in your organization to success through a series of six courses. Ultimately, leaders will increase their effectiveness in leading healthcare organizations through improved knowledge, skills, and practice implementing strategic plans.
Healthcare organizations and the physicians who run them often approach the task of management in much the same way as they approach a patient: they quickly identify symptoms or problems, make a diagnosis or analysis, and develop a treatment plan or solution. While this technique may work when making decisions about day-to-day operations, it's inadequate for evaluating the overall health of an organization and for making long-term survival plans. Effective strategic planning requires healthcare managers to shift their perspective from being a service organization to being a business.
This course teaches you several models to help you lay the foundations of a strategic plan based on the existing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing your organization. Ultimately, you will learn how to collect the right data to help you evaluate whether to invest in, discontinue, or develop certain products and services to ensure any strategic plan you devize will be profitable and in alignment with your organization's mission and vision.
Many medical groups develop strategic plans that are never implemented because the plans did not articulate how to measure progress, did not assign resources to do the work, and did not consider how to report on the goals.
This course asks you to apply organizational information you've gathered using analysis tools such as SWOT, BCG, and Porter's Five Forces to develop a strategic plan that includes specific details about who, what, when, where, and how to work on each of the agreed-upon strategic goals.
Ultimately, this course will equip you with the tools to be able to develop a comprehensive strategic plan that involves the right stakeholders and that aligns with your organization's core mission and values.
Performance reporting has three main aspects that managers must understand in order to implement it properly:
- 1. Managers must represent organizational strategy the way a scientist would, by identifying causes and effects and linking each cause and effect to a measure can be reported, discussed and improved upon throughout the organization.
- 2. Managers must understand the inherent errors in your measures of performance. You need to understand the nature of the errors and how best to address them.
- 3. Managers must understand how the performance measures you create will influence the behavior of others.
This online course explores the types and sources of measurement error, the use of causal models in analyzing measures of performance, and the differences between managing measures and managing performance.
The ability to make effective and timely decisions is an essential skill for successful executives. Mastery of this skill influences all aspects of day-to-day operations as well as strategic planning. In this course, developed by Professor Robert Bloomfield, Ph.D. of Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, you will hone your decision-making skills by following a methodology based on tested actions and sound organizational approaches. You will leave this course better equipped to confidently tackle any decision large or small, and you'll do so in a way that creates the optimal conditions for success.
All leadership is change leadership. Good leadership isn't about stagnation; it's about moving ahead. In this course, Cornell University's Professor Samuel Bacharach, Ph.D., explores the fundamental, practical skills that effective leaders have mastered.
Effective change leaders do three things; they anticipate where things are moving, they facilitate the implementation of change, and they sustain momentum by taking charge and moving things ahead. Great change leaders know how to be both proactive and reactive, as Professor Bacharach explains. Students in this course will examine their own leadership styles and practice skills that will help them translate ideas into organizational results, find ways to overcome organizational inertia, and examine strategies for overcoming individual resistance to change.
Leaders at every level need to be able to execute on their ideas. In virtually every case, this means that leaders need to be able to persuade others to join in this execution. In order to do so, understanding how to create and utilize power in an organization is critical.
In this course, developed by Professor Glen Dowell, Ph.D., of Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, students will focus on their personal relationship with power as well as how power works in their organization and social network.
Project Management Institute (PMI®) Continuing Certification: Participants who successfully complete this course will receive 6 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from PMI®. Please contact PMI ® for details about professional project management certification or recertification.
How It Works
Faculty Authors
Since coming to the Johnson Graduate School of Management in 1991, Prof. Robert Bloomfield has used laboratory experiments to study financial markets and investor behavior, and has also published in all major business disciplines, including finance, accounting, marketing, organization behavior, and operations research. Prof. Bloomfield served as director of the Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative (FASRI), an activity of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and is currently an editor of an a special issue of Journal of Accounting Research dedicated to Registered Reports of Empirical Research. Prof. Bloomfield has recently taken on editorship of Journal of Financial Reporting, which is pioneering an innovative editorial processes intended to broaden the range of research methods used in Accounting, improving the quality of research execution, and encouraging honest reporting of findings.
As the Johnson School’s Faculty Director of eLearning, Prof. Bloomfield oversees the development of online courses and helps faculty make best use of technology in traditional courses. He is the author of the award-winning eBook, What Counts and What Gets Counted, which can be downloaded for free online, and has used the book as the basis for online courses offered through eCornell, as well as award-winning teaching in Johnson’s Executive MBA programs.
Samuel Bacharach is the McKelvey-Grant Professor of Labor Management and the Director of the Smithers Institute. He received his BS in economics from NYU. His MS and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.
Upon joining the Cornell faculty in 1974, he spent most of his time working on negotiation and organizational politics, publishing numerous articles and two volumes (Power and Politics in Organizations and Bargaining: Power, Tactics, and Outcome, both with Edward J. Lawler). In the 1980s he continued working on negotiation, but shifted emphasis to the study of complex organizations, with the empirical referent being schools. Besides his academic articles, he published a number of books on school management and leadership, such as Tangled Hierarchies (with Joseph Shedd) and Education Reform: Making Sense of It All.
Professor Glen Dowell is an associate professor of management and organizations at the Johnson Graduate School of Management. He researches in the area of corporate sustainability, with a focus on firm environmental performance. Recent projects have investigated the effect of local demographic factors on changes in pollution levels, the role of corporate merger and acquisition in facilitating changes in facility environmental performance, and the relative influence of financial return and disruption on commercial adoption of energy savings initiatives.
Professor Dowell’s research has been published in Management Science, Organization Studies, Advances in Strategic Management, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Business Ethics, and Administrative Science Quarterly. He is Senior Editor at Organization Science, Co-editor of Strategic Organization, is on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal, and Administrative Science Quarterly, and represents Cornell on the board of the Alliance for Research in Corporate Sustainability (ARCS). He is also the Division Chair for the Organizations and Natural Environment Division of the Academy of Management.
Professor Dowell teaches Sustainable Global Enterprise and Critical and Strategic Thinking. He is a faculty affiliate for the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and is a faculty fellow at the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

Nick Fabrizio PhD, FACMPE, FACHE, is a principal consultant with the MGMA Health Care Consulting Group and serves on the faculty at Cornell University’s Sloan Program in Health Administration, where he has also served as the executive in residence. His primary expertise is in physician practice management and managing complex physician-hospital relationships.

Since coming to the Johnson Graduate School of Management in 1991, Prof. Robert Bloomfield has used laboratory experiments to study financial markets and investor behavior, and has also published in all major business disciplines, including finance, accounting, marketing, organization behavior, and operations research. Prof. Bloomfield served as director of the Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative (FASRI), an activity of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and is currently an editor of an a special issue of Journal of Accounting Research dedicated to Registered Reports of Empirical Research. Prof. Bloomfield has recently taken on editorship of Journal of Financial Reporting, which is pioneering an innovative editorial processes intended to broaden the range of research methods used in Accounting, improving the quality of research execution, and encouraging honest reporting of findings.
As the Johnson School’s Faculty Director of eLearning, Prof. Bloomfield oversees the development of online courses and helps faculty make best use of technology in traditional courses. He is the author of the award-winning eBook, What Counts and What Gets Counted, which can be downloaded for free online, and has used the book as the basis for online courses offered through eCornell, as well as award-winning teaching in Johnson’s Executive MBA programs.

Samuel Bacharach is the McKelvey-Grant Professor of Labor Management and the Director of the Smithers Institute. He received his BS in economics from NYU. His MS and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.
Upon joining the Cornell faculty in 1974, he spent most of his time working on negotiation and organizational politics, publishing numerous articles and two volumes (Power and Politics in Organizations and Bargaining: Power, Tactics, and Outcome, both with Edward J. Lawler). In the 1980s he continued working on negotiation, but shifted emphasis to the study of complex organizations, with the empirical referent being schools. Besides his academic articles, he published a number of books on school management and leadership, such as Tangled Hierarchies (with Joseph Shedd) and Education Reform: Making Sense of It All.

Professor Glen Dowell is an associate professor of management and organizations at the Johnson Graduate School of Management. He researches in the area of corporate sustainability, with a focus on firm environmental performance. Recent projects have investigated the effect of local demographic factors on changes in pollution levels, the role of corporate merger and acquisition in facilitating changes in facility environmental performance, and the relative influence of financial return and disruption on commercial adoption of energy savings initiatives.
Professor Dowell’s research has been published in Management Science, Organization Studies, Advances in Strategic Management, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Business Ethics, and Administrative Science Quarterly. He is Senior Editor at Organization Science, Co-editor of Strategic Organization, is on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal, and Administrative Science Quarterly, and represents Cornell on the board of the Alliance for Research in Corporate Sustainability (ARCS). He is also the Division Chair for the Organizations and Natural Environment Division of the Academy of Management.
Professor Dowell teaches Sustainable Global Enterprise and Critical and Strategic Thinking. He is a faculty affiliate for the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and is a faculty fellow at the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.
- Recognize and compensate for psychological factors in yourself and in others that affect decision quality
- Establish responsibilities and accountabilities to ensure effective follow-through on decisions made
- Find ways to develop an effective agenda for change
- Identify strategies for dealing with inertia and resistance
- Evaluate initiatives for their applicability in reaching targets
- Create a strategic vision for your organization
- Identify areas for improvement and potential growth
- Develop a strategic plan that includes a set of strategic goals and an action plan for each goal
- Monitor progress and refine the strategic plan based on results

Download a Brochure
Not ready to enroll but want to learn more? Download the certificate brochure to review program details.
- Strategic Healthcare Leadership Certificate from Cornell College of Human Ecology and Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
- 48 Professional Development Hours (4.8 CEUs)
- 18 Professional Development Units (PDUs) toward PMI recertification
Who Should Enroll
- Early to mid-level healthcare professionals looking to move into a strategy position
- Hospital and healthcare facility administrators
- Department directors
- Senior level healthcare professionals
- VP level and C-suite executives
- Hospital board members

{Anytime, anywhere.}