Course list

Working in compliance surrounding health care law, especially in an organizational context, isn't always simple. It involves coordinating many people — delegating roles, assigning tasks, and assembling and maintaining different types of expertise. It is necessary to understand multiple and occasionally overlapping systems like federal and state laws, statutes and regulations, and sometimes state or federal constitutional obligations. Most health care organizations have developed entire programs or departments that are focused on compliance, and that will be the focus in this course.

Throughout this course, you will explore various laws and regulations that health care organizations are required to follow in order to meet compliance obligations. Since there are many ways you could unintentionally fall out of compliance, you will discover strategies for averting risk by anticipating key areas of concern. By examining the consequences of noncompliance, you will recognize how such violations can be costly. As you uncover seven myths about health care compliance, it will be clear that laws and regulations apply to all organizations.

While you are not required to do so, we recommend consulting credible sources that are maintained by professional compliance groups such as the Health Care Compliance Association. Other compliance materials that may be useful are issued by the Department of Justice, the Office of Inspector General within Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. These will complement the materials on compliance and compliance programming covered in this course.

  • Jul 1, 2026
  • Sep 23, 2026
  • Dec 16, 2026
  • Mar 10, 2027
  • Jun 2, 2027

Healthcare organizations and their compliance departments spend a significant amount of time focusing on interactions with individuals. These diverse groups include everyone from patients to human research participants, along with many others, and these interactions necessitate different types of consent to do things like successfully provide service, obtain and use information, and engage in research activities. Throughout this course, you will explore some of the obligations that apply to healthcare organizations regarding these interactions with individual people.

To meet compliance standards, it is critical to keep a patient's health information private. Within the course, you will engage with tools designed to assure the capture of all the elements of a patient's informed consent, including consent to treatment, obtaining and disclosing information, and consent to participate in research. Various types of law apply in this context, including common law as well as federal and state statutes. As you progress, you will develop skills to distinguish among the various types and purposes of patient consent. You will also examine ways to protect this information once it is captured, not only by enforcing HIPAA regulations but by preventing potential exposure like a data breach or cyberattack.

Many medical advances have been made through research with human subjects, sometimes at a cost to the patients. You will also examine examples of unethical research and how recent guidelines have been put in place to avoid the misuse of human subjects. You will also discover how such special protections of patients include children. Organizations need to stay abreast of requirements surrounding consent and personal information, particularly as technology and the medium of interaction evolve over time. This course will help you to do just that.

  • Apr 22, 2026
  • Jul 15, 2026
  • Oct 7, 2026
  • Dec 30, 2026
  • Mar 24, 2027
  • Jun 16, 2027

Hospitals in the United States — especially private hospitals — have an unpleasant history of refusing to treat patients who are perceived as being unable to pay their bills. To address these issues, Congress passed a statute called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The purpose of the statute is to provide for universal rights regardless of ability to pay or citizenship and to ensure screening for an emergency or labor. As a statutory right, EMTALA acts to reinforce our healthcare system by ensuring critical access to all.

In this course, you will explore the duty that healthcare organizations have to screen and treat patients in the emergency room setting. You will examine what constitutes an emergency and what the penalties are for failing to meet EMTALA obligations. There are some instances when it is appropriate to transfer a patient to another healthcare facility; you will explore those requirements as well. You will also discover the infrastructure required to comply with these healthcare obligations and examine the costs of uncompensated care to the healthcare organization as well as the community at large.

  • May 6, 2026
  • Jul 29, 2026
  • Oct 21, 2026
  • Jan 13, 2027
  • Apr 7, 2027
  • Jun 30, 2027

While healthcare involves a noble mission, it is nonetheless a business, and just like any other business operation, there is a potential for fraud. In this course, you will focus on what are commonly called fraud and abuse laws. You will discover the legal protections for the doctor-patient relationships in state law, such as doctor-patient confidentiality, as well as the doctor's fiduciary duties to the patient. At the federal level, you will examine fraud and abuse statutes that carve out particular types of transactions with profit motives to penalize. These are transactions where providers submit false claims to the government for payment and where providers receive kickbacks in exchange for ordering care or making referrals.

As you progress, you will examine the liability your organization can face under the False Claims Act, including medical billing and physician contracting. You will also examine the definition of a kickback and the penalty for receiving one. In addition, you will explore safe harbors that allow practices that could be construed as anti-kickback violations but are protected from penalty because they could benefit a patient's healthcare overall.

  • May 20, 2026
  • Aug 12, 2026
  • Nov 4, 2026
  • Jan 27, 2027
  • Apr 21, 2027

Federal laws provide protections for patients based on particular characteristics such as disability, race, and sex, among others. These laws grew out of evidence of systemic discriminatory practices by healthcare institutions and, while they don't cover everything, they deter or penalize the most egregious of these discriminatory practices. In this course, you will explore specific federal protections and how they have been strengthened by additional legislation.

As you explore discrimination on the basis of disability, you will examine two key federal laws: the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has a wide scope, and the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which is narrower. Progressing through the course, you will examine discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. You will also discover how Title VI of The Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act are the principle statutes designed to protect individuals. You will examine the penalties for healthcare practices that discriminate on the basis of sex, including gender identity, as covered under two principal laws: Title IX of the Education Amendments Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.

  • Jun 3, 2026
  • Aug 26, 2026
  • Nov 18, 2026
  • Feb 10, 2027
  • May 5, 2027

eCornell Online Workshops are live, interactive 3-hour learning experiences led by Cornell faculty experts. These premium short-format sessions focus on AI topics and are designed for busy professionals who want to gain immediately applicable skills and strategic perspectives. Workshops include faculty presentations, breakout discussions, and guided hands-on practice.

The AI Workshops All-Access Pass provides you with unlimited participation for 6 months from your date of purchase. Whether you choose to attend one workshop per month, or several per week, the All-Access Pass will allow you to customize your AI journey and stay on top of the latest AI trends.

Workshops cover a range of cutting-edge AI topics applicable across industries, hosted by Cornell faculty at the forefront of their fields. Whether you are just getting started with AI, seeking to build your AI skillset, or exploring advanced applications of AI, Workshops will provide you with an action-oriented learning experience for immediate application in your career. Sample Workshops include:

  • Work Smarter with AI Agents: Individual and Team Effectiveness
  • Leading AI Transformation: Bigger Than You Imagine, Harder Than You Expect
  • Using AI at Work: Practical Choices and Better Results
  • Search & Discoverability in the Era of AI
  • Don't Just Prompt AI - Govern it
  • AI-Powered Product Manager
  • Leverage AI and Human Connection to Lead through Uncertainty

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Frequently Asked Questions

Healthcare organizations operate under intense regulatory scrutiny, where a privacy lapse, a billing misstep, or an inconsistent emergency screening process can quickly turn into legal exposure and reputational harm. Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate helps you build practical fluency with the laws and compliance expectations that shape day-to-day decisions in hospitals, clinics, insurers, research settings, and other healthcare environments.

In this certificate program, authored by faculty from Cornell Law School, you will learn how to identify common legal risk areas, understand how enforcement works, and translate legal requirements into workable policies and processes. You’ll also strengthen your ability to collaborate with legal counsel by learning what questions to ask, what facts matter, and where to look for credible guidance when issues arise.

If you want practical confidence with core healthcare laws, the ability to design and evaluate compliance programs that reduce organizational risk, and job-ready skills you can apply to real scenarios involving privacy, emergency care, and fraud and abuse, you should choose Cornell's Healthcare Law Certificate.

Many online legal or compliance courses focus on passive content consumption. Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate is designed to help you practice applying health law concepts to realistic workplace situations so you can make better decisions under real operational constraints.

You learn in a small, cohort-based environment with an expert facilitator who guides discussion and provides feedback on your written work. Instead of relying on memorization, the learning experience emphasizes scenario analysis, compliance program design choices, and risk spotting across common, high-stakes areas like patient consent, protected health information, emergency department obligations, billing and contracting, and nondiscrimination.

Throughout Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate, you will engage with faculty-developed tools and practical reference materials, then use them to build work products such as protocols, response plans, and board-facing roadmaps. The result is a more human, applied learning experience that supports confidence and follow-through, not just familiarity with terminology.

Enrolling in this certificate also provides you with a 6-month All-Access Pass to eCornell's live online AI Workshops, interactive sessions led by world-class Cornell faculty that combine Ivy League insight with practical applications for busy professionals. Each 3-hour Workshop features structured instruction, guided practice, and real tools to build competitive AI capabilities, plus the opportunity to connect with a global cohort of growth-oriented peers. While AI Workshops are not required, they enhance certificate programs through:

  • Integrating AI perspectives across most curricula
  • Responding to emerging AI developments and trends
  • Offering direct engagement with Cornell faculty at the forefront of AI research

Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate is built for professionals who need to understand how health law and compliance requirements affect real operations, even if you are not serving in a legal role.

You are a strong fit if you work in or alongside healthcare organizations and want to strengthen your ability to identify risk, support compliant processes, and communicate clearly with stakeholders. Learners commonly include:

  • Healthcare administrators and executives
  • Clinicians and clinical leaders who influence policy, documentation, or workflows
  • Compliance, risk management, privacy, and audit professionals
  • Health policy and public health professionals
  • Patient advocates and program leaders
  • Lawyers and legal-adjacent professionals supporting healthcare clients or institutions
  • Medical research professionals working with human subjects protections

Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate is especially relevant if your responsibilities touch patient information, emergency care access, billing and contracting, or nondiscrimination obligations.

Project work in Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate is designed to help you turn legal requirements into practical, defensible processes. You will typically analyze a scenario, identify the governing obligations, and then produce a concrete policy, workflow, or plan you could adapt to your own organization.

Examples of projects completed by past learners include:

  • Building an emergency department intake and discharge approach that meets EMTALA screening requirements for frequent visitors while using case management and documented referrals to redirect non-urgent care appropriately
  • Creating an EMTALA-compliant stabilization and transfer workflow for a critically ill patient when no ICU bed is available, including physician risk certification, receiving-facility acceptance, appropriate transport level, and complete record handoff
  • Designing a HIPAA and HITECH breach response plan for thousands of exposed electronic records by activating incident response, completing forensic scoping, issuing required patient, regulator, and media notifications, and implementing rapid and long-term security controls
  • Drafting a board-facing roadmap for launching a formal compliance program that applies OIG-aligned core elements, including governance, policies, training, auditing, non-retaliation reporting channels, and corrective action tracking
  • Improving emergency department access for patients with limited English proficiency by standardizing preferred-language capture at intake, prioritizing qualified interpreter services, and expanding multilingual signage and translated discharge instructions

These projects are intentionally job relevant so you can strengthen your compliance judgment while producing work you can discuss with leaders, auditors, and counsel.

Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate equips you to make more confident, better-informed decisions at the intersection of healthcare operations, risk, and regulation.

After completing the Healthcare Law Certificate, you will have the skills to:

  • Identify the structure and requirements of compliance programs, analyzing key areas in which problems may arise
  • Recognize the various types of patient consent that healthcare providers are required to obtain
  • Identify institutional obligations and procedures for emergency room screening
  • Identify possible risks and safe harbors for Anti-Kickback Statute activities
  • Examine laws that are designed to prevent and penalize discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics

Students who complete the program often report clearer understanding of core healthcare laws and enforcement risk, including HIPAA and EMTALA, plus stronger grounding in how to build and evaluate an effective compliance program. Many also describe improved ability to spot and analyze liability issues in billing, contracting, and reimbursement practices, and more confidence navigating fraud and abuse topics such as Stark Law.

Learners frequently highlight scenario-based assignments that mirror real compliance decisions, engaged facilitators who provide actionable feedback, and a manageable format that fits alongside full-time work. Several students characterize the experience as a strong return on investment and recommend the program to colleagues, sometimes enrolling team members.

In addition, because eCornell represents the pinnacle of premium online professional education, participants in eCornell's programs often experience long-term career transformation such as promotions to more senior roles, salary increases, improved networking opportunities, and successful career transitions.

Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate, which consists of 5 short courses, is designed to be completed in 3 months. Each course in this certificate runs for 2 weeks, with a typical weekly time commitment of 3 to 5 hours.

Flexibility comes from the way the learning is structured. You can complete most coursework asynchronously, including faculty-authored videos, readings, tools, and written assignments. At the same time, you have built-in structure through weekly deadlines, facilitated discussions, and live online sessions that create opportunities to ask questions and learn from your cohort without needing to travel or pause your career.

Students in Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate often describe the experience as a practical, career-relevant way to build confidence with the laws, regulations, and compliance expectations that shape day-to-day decisions in healthcare settings. They frequently highlight how the program connects legal concepts to realistic workplace scenarios, while still being manageable for busy professionals.

Common themes students share include:

  • Clear understanding of core healthcare laws and enforcement risk, including HIPAA and EMTALA
  • Strong grounding in building and evaluating an effective healthcare compliance program
  • Better ability to spot and analyze liability issues in billing, contracting, and reimbursement practices
  • More confidence navigating key regulatory topics such as Stark Law and related fraud and abuse concerns
  • Scenario-based assignments that mirror real compliance and risk management decisions
  • A well-structured learning path that helps complex legal concepts feel approachable
  • Engaged facilitators who provide timely, actionable feedback on discussions and projects
  • Flexible pacing that makes it feasible to complete coursework alongside full-time work and family responsibilities
  • Easy-to-use online platform with on-demand access to readings, tools, and lecture content
  • A strong return on investment for professional development, with many students recommending the program to colleagues and even enrolling team members

A law degree is not required to benefit from Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate. The curriculum is built to help you develop practical legal literacy for healthcare settings, including how to recognize issues, gather the right facts, and understand which rules and agencies may apply.

Because the work is grounded in real organizational scenarios, the Healthcare Law Certificate tends to work well for professionals in operations, compliance, clinical leadership, privacy, research administration, and policy roles. You will also gain a clearer sense of when and how to escalate questions to counsel, including what information to bring to those conversations.

Course materials are educational and are not a substitute for legal advice, which helps keep the learning focused on decision making and risk management rather than case-specific guidance.

Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate focuses on the legal and compliance obligations that most often shape operational risk in healthcare organizations. You will work with a wide range of federal requirements and related compliance practices, including:

  • Designing and evaluating compliance programs, including core program elements, investigations, auditing and monitoring, and corrective action
  • Patient consent obligations, including informed consent to treatment, advance directives, surrogate decision making, and special issues involving minors
  • Privacy, security, and breach response for protected health information under HIPAA and related requirements, including business associate responsibilities and de-identification approaches
  • Human subjects research obligations, including Belmont principles, Common Rule requirements, and Institutional Review Board oversight
  • Emergency department screening, stabilization, and transfer duties under EMTALA, including institutional infrastructure needs and penalties
  • Medical billing and contracting liabilities under fraud and abuse frameworks, including False Claims Act exposure, Anti-Kickback risks and safe harbors, and physician self-referral considerations under Stark Law
  • Federal nondiscrimination protections in healthcare, including disability, race or national origin, and sex-based protections that are reinforced through Affordable Care Act nondiscrimination provisions
  • Emerging operational risk areas that intersect with compliance, such as algorithmic bias concerns and cybersecurity and breach costs

This scope helps you build a practical map of what tends to trigger enforcement, audits, investigations, and corrective action planning.

Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate is primarily asynchronous, which means you can watch lectures, complete readings, and work on assignments at times that fit your schedule. This on-demand structure is paired with clear deadlines that help you maintain momentum.

To keep the experience interactive, the certificate program also includes facilitated discussions and opportunities for live online sessions where you can explore course topics through real scenarios with your cohort. You do not need to attend an in-person component to complete Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate.

Cornell’s Healthcare Law Certificate can be highly beneficial for professionals involved in case management, even though it is not explicitly focused on case management itself. Case managers are often responsible for ensuring that patient care complies with legal regulations while navigating complex systems of collaboration among patients, providers, and insurers. The Healthcare Law Certificate equips learners with critical legal knowledge that can directly support the demands of effective case management.

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