Mount Sinai Equips Physicians to Lead Modern Health Systems

Physicians are increasingly taking on roles that extend beyond patient care, as health care systems grow more complex and interconnected. Yet leadership and management skills are rarely part of formal medical training. At Mount Sinai, closing that gap has become a core focus of graduate medical education.

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has built a continuum of leadership training anchored by its Graduate Medical Education Leadership Development Program, a yearlong initiative for residents and fellows.  The school has also expanded those efforts with a more intensive, multi-year track developed in partnership with its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

“Early-stage physicians want to enhance their effectiveness. They want what they do clinically to be impactful, but they’re also looking at leadership roles that allow them to improve outcomes across entire units or clinical lines of service,” says Brian J. Nickerson, PhD, JD, Senior Associate Dean for Master’s Programs and Director of the Master of Health Administration (MHA) program in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

While medical training provides a strong foundation in clinical expertise, far less attention is given to how physicians lead teams and navigate complex care environments. “Leadership development is generally not part of the MD curriculum,” he adds. “The sooner clinicians are exposed to these concepts, the better positioned they are to apply them and build effective leadership skills over time.”

Investing in Physician Leaders

Now in its eighth year, Mount Sinai’s Leadership Development Program offers residents and fellows an educational experience focused on developing skills to guide hospitals and health systems through strategic and operational change.

Each cohort includes roughly 30 to 40 trainees from across disciplines who participate in monthly sessions with faculty and senior leaders.

Dr. Nickerson describes the curriculum as deliberately hands-on rather than lecture-based, with a focus on skill development through self-assessment, feedback, and practical exercises. Participants are given protected time to step away from clinical duties and examine team dynamics, leadership practices, and how change is implemented within a hospital setting.

“Leadership is fundamentally a set of behaviors supported by tools,” he says. “Participants learn those tools and how to develop more effective behaviors aligned with best practices.”

Embracing a Systems Approach

Anthony Tanella, MD, MSH ‘20, was already thinking about how systems of care shape patient safety and care delivery during his anesthesiology residency at The Mount Sinai Hospital from 2016 to 2020.  Before becoming a physician, he studied biomedical engineering and worked as an actuarial analyst, a role focused on risk and systems that continues to inform his approach to health care.

Today, as Director of Quality and Safety for Ambulatory Anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Tanella leads initiatives to improve patient safety and clinical operations. While at Mount Sinai, he participated in the GME Leadership Development Program, where he began to apply that systems-focused perspective in practical ways.

“My earlier background gave me some awareness that medicine has many dimensions beyond the individual patient encounter,” Dr. Tanella says. “If you want to influence outcomes at a broader level, you have to understand the larger system. I also received advice from leaders at the hospital, including a former department chair, who encouraged residents to step outside the operating room and develop other skills.”

During the program, he worked with residents and staff across Mount Sinai departments to improve communication around daily cases. He collaborated on an initiative to create a structured morning huddle that brought together anesthesiology and otolaryngology residents, nurses, and other team members.

“The program helped us consider how different people function in teams and how leadership styles can adapt to different situations,” Dr. Tanella says. “I hadn’t really considered that before, how certain people work better together, or how you might adjust your own communication style depending on the team.”

In his current role at Yale, a systems-level perspective informs efforts to improve how clinicians use technology and coordinate across care settings. There, he helped create a role focused on clinicians’ use of information systems, including electronic medical records and communication tools. “That work requires stepping back and looking at how the system functions as a whole,” he says.

 A More Intensive Track

Mount Sinai’s newer Health Care Administration, Leadership, and Management Fellowship, or HALM, is aimed at physicians seeking deeper, more formal training in health system leadership. Launched in 2023, the ACGME-accredited program is one of the first programs in the nation and among only nine programs nationally. It combines graduate medical education with the MHA curriculum in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

Shantheri Shenoy, MBBS, Associate Professor of Medicine (Hospital Medicine, Nephrology) and Associate Division Chief of Hospital Medicine at Mount Sinai West, became the fellowship’s inaugural participant after already stepping into leadership within her department. She had prior training in quality improvement but wanted more formal preparation in operations, strategy, business development, and data analytics.

Dr. Shenoy was drawn to the program’s combination of coursework, hands-on experience through systemwide rotations, executive coaching, and mentorship from faculty, alumni, and industry experts.

“As a hospitalist and nephrologist, I care for inpatients every day,” Dr. Shenoy says. “This fellowship broadened my exposure from departmental leadership to system-level leadership. You begin to understand operations from an enterprise perspective—business plan development, strategic planning, care delivery models—all while keeping patients as the North Star.”

During the fellowship, she focused on initiatives related to discharge planning, workforce strategy, and care delivery across ambulatory and inpatient settings. Her capstone project centered on improving discharge-to-home rates at Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West through data-driven process improvements.

Brijen Shah, MD, HALM Fellowship Director and Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education, says the program is designed to integrate academic training with real-world experience. The MHA curriculum provides a foundation in management and strategy, while GME offers opportunities to apply those tools to clinical and operational challenges across the Mount Sinai Health System.

“The fellowship gives physicians a clearer view of how care is delivered across the Mount Sinai Health System and the opportunity to work with multidisciplinary teams to address operational challenges and how care is delivered and organized,” says Dr. Shah, who is also a Professor of Medicine (Gastroenterology) at the Icahn School of Medicine.

Dr. Shenoy credits mentors such as Dr. Shah, along with Mount Sinai’s broader mentoring culture, with helping shape her development as a physician leader.

“Mount Sinai has a culture of growing young leaders,” she says. “A leader doesn’t become successful by finding followers. A leader becomes successful by helping other leaders grow.”

She also emphasized the importance of interpersonal leadership skills.

“A leader must be compassionate. A leader must be emotionally intelligent. And most importantly, a leader must be humble,” she says.

Dr. Shenoy completed the fellowship in January 2026 and says she hopes eventually to serve as a chief medical officer or chief operating officer while remaining grounded in clinical care.

“You can’t lead from an ivory tower,” she says. “You need to stay connected to the frontlines to understand what’s truly happening.”