EMBA for Healthcare Professionals

As health care continues to transform, leaders in this space need knowledge and skills to support the development of new business models and innovations. Leaders must learn how to navigate an increasingly complex environment due to technological and regulatory changes. Core business skills are critical to develop and lead the next generation of health-care organizations. An Executive MBA not only provides foundational knowledge across all areas of business — from finance, accounting, and business analytics to management, operations, and marketing — it also differentiates health-care leaders. Whether you want to lead your health-care organization or create a new business in this field, an executive MBA will help you achieve your goals and make an impact.

Benefits of Wharton’s EMBA Program for Health-Care Professionals

At Wharton, you’ll gain a full-powered, top-ranked MBA plus:

  • Rigor: a curriculum that will prepare you to face new business challenges in health care
  • Access: to world-renowned faculty who are shaping the future of business, including professors in Wharton’s Health Care Management Department
  • Value: Wharton consistently ranks as one of the top MBAs for 20-year earnings
  • Attention: exclusive one-on-one career and leadership coaching
  • Network: the largest alumni network of any business school — 100,000+ Wharton connections worldwide, plus the Ivy League network of the University of Pennsylvania

How a Wharton MBA is helping Denise Carter, WG’19, grow her pharmaceutical business.

Health-Care EMBA Courses & Curriculum

In addition to the core business classes students take in their first year, second-year students can further explore areas of interest with electives. Wharton Executive MBA cohorts select from more than 200 electives. Students then choose from this subset of courses, with the option to take classes at both of our campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco. Students interested in health care often choose to study innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategy as well as a diversity of other areas. Examples of recent electives offered include:

Global Modular Course on Challenges and Opportunities in Africa:  Health Care and Business in Ethiopia – In this one-week intensive course, students examine the health sector where Ethiopia has been a pioneer in getting basic health care to the largely rural population through the innovative health extension worker program and some market-based incentives for hospitals and health-care workers. Students study the complex political dynamics of the country and the region. 

Innovation – The is an intensive, integrative, project course in which student teams create one or more real businesses. The project experience is an exciting context in which to learn key tools and fundamentals useful in innovation, problem-solving, and design. 

Managing Organizational Change – This course focuses on specific concepts, theories and tools that can guide executives to lead organizational change to successful execution. Students study change strategies, such as leading change, managing cultural change, and mergers or acquisitions, corporate transformation, managing growth, building the customer-centric organization, and managing radical organizational change.

Wharton EMBA Students Global Business Week
Dr. Shika Pappoe and Robert Specht on their Global Business Week trip in Cuba.

Marketing Strategy – This course views marketing as both a general management responsibility and an orientation of an organization that helps one to create, capture and sustain customer value. The focus is on the business unit and its network of channels, customer relationships, and alliances.

Technology Strategy – The course is designed for students interested in analyzing and developing firm strategies in industries where technological innovations play an important role in creating and sustaining competitive advantage. It provides concepts and frameworks to help understand the interaction among firm strategies, technologies and markets.

Global Business WeekStudents choose from four locations for this required one-week trip, with one of the locations often focused on health care. Read how Dr. Shika Pappoe, WG’16, and Robert Specht, WG’16, learned about health care in Cuba during their Global Business Week trip.

What Can You Do in Healthcare With An Executive MBA?

A diversity of health-care professionals come to Wharton’s executive MBA program to advance their careers. Many are physicians looking to take on greater leadership roles in their organizations or to develop health-care related technology as a business. Others are seeking to rise in the ranks of pharmaceutical or biotech companies. Whether you work in medicine, insurance, medical devices, or health care IT, a Wharton MBA can help you achieve your goals.

Dr. Shaun Honig, WG’17, leveraged Wharton’s career coaching to open doors and land a new job in the medical field.

How biotech entrepreneur Andrew Ritter, WG’16, earned an MBA, pulled off an IPO, and made advances to solve a medical problem.

Dr. Brian Torcato, WG’13, came to Wharton to get the business skills needed to launch a company to improve outcomes for children with autism.

Learn how Wharton can benefit your health-care career.

Read more stories about how Wharton is benefitting students and alumni working in health care.