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Cornell online certificate trains leaders in health care compliance

A wooden gavel and a metal stethoscope lying side by side on an open book with visible text on the pages.

Critical decisions are made every second in health care, each undertaken with layers of both medical and legal considerations. A health care compliance plan gives providers guidance and processes to meet regulations and ethical standards.

Kristen Underhill, a professor of law and associate dean for faculty research at Cornell Law School, began her journey in public health research in 2004 and transitioned into law by 2011. With a robust understanding of the U.S. health care system and a keen understanding of torts and public health law, Underhill transfers her unique expertise to learners in the Healthcare Law certificate program from eCornell.

“The program focuses on domestic health care law, including the application of criminal law, non-discrimination law and data security and protection law,” Underhill said. “The certificate provides a broad overview of the different kinds of organizational obligations that apply to health care facilities.”

Underhill intends to help learners understand that health care professionals, executives, administrators and decision makers need more than just clinical expertise; they must possess an understanding of the legal landscape surrounding them.

This comprehensive program has five courses. In Obligations to Patients, learners investigate informed consent, research with human subjects and the protection of health care information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Each module in the course ends with a real-world scenario, putting the learner in the position of a health care executive or administrator who would identify a problem and take affirmative steps to solve it.

Other courses focus on specific laws such as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which outlines the obligations of emergency departments to screen and stabilize all patients regardless of their ability to pay. Each course immerses learners in authentic scenarios and equips them to approach challenges at health care facilities.

“Health care providers and administrators might not always be thinking about compliance – especially if they have a small practice – but regulation of health care is so thoroughgoing that you cannot operate a patient care organization without understanding the relevant laws,” Underhill said.

In the Healthcare Law certificate program, professionals can acquire the knowledge and skills to ensure every patient receives care that is medically sound, legally grounded and ethical. Learn more and enroll.

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Center for Virtual Care expands digital health training

Digital health and the tools for patients to virtually reach their health care providers have quickly become a mainstay of medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Weill Cornell Medicine’s Center for Virtual Care is positioned at the leading edge of this health care delivery transformation. Leveraging their years of experience with video visits, the center’s experts train providers how to best use it to give their patients comprehensive, compassionate care.

Since its formal launch in early 2020, the center has hosted 30 sessions with more than 500 health care providers across the continuum – physicians, residents, medical students, physician assistants and physician assistant students, nurses, care managers and other practitioners – teaching them “web-side” manner, how to examine patients and make treatment-related decisions remotely, and other fundamentals through live courses and simulations. Trainings began in person, but quickly transitioned to remote learning in March 2020 with the emergence of COVID-19. The center’s latest offering is a two-week online course, developed in collaboration with eCornell, that provides strategies practitioners can use when meeting remotely with their patients.

“Our physicians have been delivering digital health care since 2016 and have seen firsthand the power of the virtual doctor’s office in reaching our patients, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Rahul Sharma, chairman of Weill Cornell Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine, which operates the center. “The Center for Virtual Care strives to train our health care colleagues on digital health best practices and drive national dialogue about the value of this new clinical medium in delivering the finest patient care.”

The new eCornell course, which features a curriculum in-line with the Association of American Medical College’s Telehealth Competencies, offers instruction on how to harness the digital health medium to effectively create a therapeutic patient-provider encounter. Students learn essentials including verbal and nonverbal communication strategies to convey empathy and compassion, how to overcome technical challenges, and how to conduct remote patient exams.

“As physicians, providing high-quality care is the bedrock of our work, regardless of whether that care happens in-person or on a screen,” said Dr. Peter Greenwald, director of telemedicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine and an assistant professor of clinical emergency medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. “The work we are doing at the Center for Virtual Care is helping establish a new patient provider space that, like the office exam room, has its own set of rules, practices and tools of the trade. The material we teach at the center allows practitioners to become proficient in this new space in order to make their digital health care a practice of excellence.”

The digital medium offers patients the opportunity to connect with providers at a time and place that’s convenient for them. But telemedicine practice can create new communication barriers and may even expose providers and institutions to risk. The Center for Virtual Care tackles these issues to ensure that digital health offers its very best therapeutic benefits at the lowest medical-legal risk.

“The center’s goal is to empower physicians and provide them with the tools they need to become proficient in the digital space,” said Dr. Neel Naik, the director of simulation education for the Department of Emergency Medicine and an assistant professor of clinical emergency medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. “The pandemic has accelerated a shift toward virtual patient encounters and has underscored just how important these skills are in fostering a positive health care experience.”

Megan Burke is chief marketing officer for eCornell and Alyssa Sunkin-Strube is newsroom manager for Weill Cornell Medicine.