Academic Program Development

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Academic health systems and medical schools face growing strategic, operational, and financial pressures.

While investments in research and education are essential, sustainability depends on aligning strategies, improving operational efficiency, metric-driven performance, and reducing the costs of discovery and education.

Chartis partners with clients to advance research and education strategies. We help align academic and clinical program investments and optimize financial performance, ensuring long-term impact across the tripartite mission.

Demonstrating academic program value

When fully aligned, the tripartite mission of academic medicine drives differentiation, advances innovation, and supports exceptional health professionals. However, facing shrinking margins, leaders must ensure these academic priorities support revenue growth and diversification while also reducing costs and operational inefficiencies.

Demonstrating the value of academic investments requires a clear understanding of their impact and cost. Too often, organizations lack fact-based assessments to build business cases and performance metrics for stakeholders. Strategic and operational academic alignment has never been more important.

Unclear path from idea to execution: Pursuing new programs without a fully developed feasibility case or operational roadmap can bring unresolved questions around cost, timeline, accreditation, and sustainability.
Disconnect between academic and clinical strategy: Research and education programs are not always tightly aligned with clinical priorities. This limits their ability to support broader system goals, from clinical research growth to workforce development to service line growth and community impact.
Inconsistent faculty effort expectations: Unclear definitions and expectations for faculty effort across missions hinder effective resource planning and accurate project performance projections. This is often compounded by a shortage of best practices for faculty evaluation, development, and performance improvement.

Integrated academic strategy

Our senior advisors bring deep experience across the tripartite mission, combining consulting expertise with firsthand leadership experience in academic medicine. Our strategies are built with a clear understanding of how each mission impacts the other.

Working across health systems, medical schools, faculty practice plans, and universities, we take a holistic approach to academic alignment and program development, driving value, efficiency, cost effectiveness, and stronger alignment.

New program development: We work directly with executive and academic leadership to pressure-test the idea, building a defensible business case across financials, demand, accreditation, and operating requirements. From there, we translate that work into an executable plan with clear sequencing, dependencies, and decision points so leaders can move forward with confidence.
Research strategy: We work alongside leadership to define where research should grow, and what it takes to get there. That starts with a fact-based assessment of your research enterprise in order to develop a robust strategy and execution plan. The result is not just a plan, but a research enterprise that operates more efficiently, secures necessary financial support, is positioned to scale, and incorporates important current and future trends.
Administrative structure optimization: We help diagnose where operating models are breaking down, using operational data and best practices to pinpoint duplication, delays, and misaligned roles. From there, we co-develop and implement a more integrated structure, often including technology-enabled shared services and workforce redesign, so teams operate with less friction, lower cost, higher satisfaction and materially improved throughput.

Our perspective:

Strategically aligning the research and education missions with the clinical mission creates academic health system competitive differentiation. High performance and results ensure that differentiation is sustainable and financially viable. ”

-David Church, Senior Partner

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it take to launch a new medical school or regional campus?

Launching a new medical school or regional campus requires a feasibility study and an executable implementation roadmap. By rigorously analyzing market demand, clinical training sites, operational requirements, and organizational readiness, Chartis builds a phased roadmap that identifies key dependencies and decision gates, ensuring your path to launch is financially sound, prepared for accreditation review, and built to last.

How do academic health systems measure success in academic program development?

Academic health systems measure success by whether a program can move from strategy to execution, minimizing unforeseen roadblocks—up to and including enrollment and program launch. In performance-focused engagements, success may include measurable efficiency gains, such as reducing administrative process timelines (e.g., from 120 days to 60 days).

Partnering for progress: Health system achieves NIH research success via program management approach

With multiple large-scale research programs, leaders at the University of Pittsburgh needed a program management approach to deliver timely results and remain competitive for future funding.

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