Fewer than 5% of US health systems are led by physician CEOs. Physicians spend their careers making consequential decisions under pressure, earning the trust of patients and families, and seeing firsthand where our healthcare system works—and where it doesn’t. Yet they remain underrepresented in the most senior leadership roles of the organizations where care is delivered.
The Physicians Executive Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business (PEP) was created to help change that. This week, its inaugural cohort reached a major milestone. Sixty physicians from health systems across the country spent the program moving through strategy, finance, negotiation, organizational culture, value creation, operational excellence, and the role of AI in healthcare. The coursework ran virtually over several months and closed with a one-week residency on the Stanford GSB campus, capped by a live boardroom challenge that put the cohort in front of a simulated health system board with a real strategic problem to solve.
Funded by the Doximity Foundation and taught by Stanford GSB faculty alongside healthcare CEOs and technology experts, the program is built on a straightforward premise. Physicians already carry clinical judgment and the trust of their patients. What many have not been given is the opportunity to develop fluency in the financial language used to make large capital and investment allocation decisions. PEP gives them that, helping physicians translate their clinical experience into greater influence on the strategic decisions shaping healthcare.
Why physician leadership
Healthcare is not short on strategy decks or reform proposals. What it often lacks is enough physicians in the rooms where those decisions are finalized.
Dr. Hardeep Phull, an oncologist in the inaugural cohort, explained:
We as physicians are either absent or diminished in the narrative, despite our unique role to drive the ultimate value and outcomes that our patients deserve."
That absence has a cost. Decisions about staffing, workflow, technology, and resource allocation shape whether clinicians can do their jobs and whether patients get the care they need.
The Doximity Foundation believes that bringing more clinical experience into these conversations can help ensure the realities of delivering care are represented when consequential decisions are made. That’s why we see investing in physician leadership as an investment in healthcare itself—and in the communities physicians serve.
What's next
The curriculum was rigorous. But cohort members repeatedly pointed to the same thing as the most valuable part of the experience: each other.
The program brought together physician executives from academic centers, integrated health systems, and entrepreneurial ventures, across specialties and career stages. Much of the learning happened between sessions, in the exchange of hard-won lessons from people who had made difficult calls and were willing to talk about what they got wrong.
They arrived as individuals from different corners of medicine. They left as a cohort, connected by a shared commitment to lead.
Dr. Phull framed what that means going forward:
Graduating from this prestigious program will prepare our talented team with a collective power to direct the future of our profession with innovation and unrelenting, empathetic leadership.
To the inaugural class: congratulations. We’re proud to have invested in your leadership, and we can’t wait to see where you take it from here.
Nominations for the 2027 Physicians Executive Program will open soon. To learn more, visit foundation.doximity.com/pep.