The Wharton School has recently launched the Wharton Health Care Excellence and Leadership Strategy (HEALS) Initiative.
The goal of HEALS is to improve population health and healthcare globally by leading the development and dissemination of knowledge related to health care leadership, management, and innovation. HEALS leverages the robust, multidisciplinary expertise of the Wharton community (faculty, student, alumni, and partners) to make a positive difference in health care.
HEALS has four key objectives
♦ Train leaders across all sectors of the health care industry
♦ Cultivate high-impact research on health care leadership and management
♦ Convene practitioners and researchers focused on health care leadership and management
♦ Engage and partner with Wharton health care management alumni
Topic Areas
In these topic areas, we leverage a variety of research methods, industry partnerships, and analytical tools to better understand the phenomena and generate and trial promising improvement strategies.
Patient Experience
Facilitating Patient-Centered Care Experiences.
Workforce Experience
Supporting the Health Care Workforce
Financing
Advancing Value-Based Healthcare Financing
Population Health
Strengthening Population Health Through Industry and Organizational Practices
Patient Experience
Advancing understanding of patients’ experiences and developing creative ideas to improve their interactions with health systems and providers so care is timely, coordinated, and reflective of patient goals.
Recent Research
- Strengthening Patient Experience Measurement and Improvement
- “Nothing is more powerful than words:” how patient experience narratives enable improvement
- The how matters: How primary care provider communication with team relates to patients’ disease management
- Last-mile Delivery in Health Care: Drone Delivery for Blood Products in Rwanda
- Hospital Consolidation and Quality: Opening the Behavioral Black Box
Workforce Experience
Identifying factors that influence the healthcare workforce’s well-being and their ability to deliver care effectively and efficiently.
Recent Research
- “I Quit”: Schedule Volatility as a Driver of Voluntary Employee Turnover
- Closing the productivity gap: Improving worker productivity through public relative performance feedback and validation of best practices
- Work team identification associated with less stress and burnout among front-line emergency department staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic
- How do doctors respond to incentives? unintended consequences of paying doctors to reduce costs
- The relationship between scope of practice laws for task delegation
and nurse turnover in home health - Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on
psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams
Financing
Evaluating the impact of different financial models on organizations and patients, with the goal of improving the value of health care.
Recent Research
- Equity investment in physician practices: what’s all this Brouhaha?
- Is employment group insurance financing of expensive gene therapies threatened in the United States?
- A Physician and Practice Incentive Intervention to Increase Referrals to High-Value Settings
- Why Does the Inflation Reduction Act Exclude Expensive Cancer Treatments in Price Negotiations?
- Price Indices and the Value of Innovation with Heterogenous Patients
Population Health
Illuminating how industry and organizational practices impact population health, and actions that facilitate better health and longevity for individuals.
Recent Research
- Where is all the deviance? Liminal prescribing and the social networks underlying the prescription drug crisis.
- Time is the Wisest Counselor of All: The Value of Provider-Patient Engagement Length in Home Health Care.
- Prescription drug advertising and drug utilization: The role of Medicare Part D
- The impacts of physician payments on patient access, use, and health.
- Effect of human-AI teams on oncology prescreening: Final analysis of a randomized trial.
Faculty Co-Directors
Guy David
Co-Director, Health Care Excellence and Leadership Strategy (HEALS) Initiative
Alan B. Miller Professor; Professor of Health Care Management; Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine
Chair, Health Care Management Department
Marissa King
Co-Director, Health Care Excellence and Leadership Strategy (HEALS) Initiative
Alice Y. Hung President’s Distinguished Professor
Professor of Health Care Management
Professor of Management
Ingrid Nembhard
Co-Director, Health Care Excellence and Leadership Strategy (HEALS) Initiative
Fishman Family President’s Distinguished Professor
Professor of Health Care Management
Professor of Management (Organizational Behavior)
News & Awards
NIHCM Research Award
Atul Gupta and Catherine Ishitani Win 2025 NIHCM Research Award.
Lindback Award
Guy David was awarded the 2025 Lindback Award for PhD Teaching and Mentorship.
MiFF PhD Scholar Award
LDI and Wharton’s Cynthia Chude Wins 2025 MiFF PhD Scholar Award.
Wei-Wu He, WG’99 and Prof. Guy David
The HEALS Initiative is grateful to the Huiying Memorial Foundation and Wei-Wu He, WG’99, for providing generous support to launch research and programming activities.
