July 14, 2026

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​FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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Empathetics Launches Industry-First Empathic Leadership Assessment for Healthcare Organizations

 

Groundbreaking Leadership Development Profile provides healthcare organizations with actionable insights to measure empathy and accountability, and improve performance and patient experience. 

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Boston, MA, July 14, 2026 — Empathetics, the healthcare industry's leader in empathy and relationship-centered leadership development, today announced the launch of the Empathetics Leadership Development Profile (LDP), a first-of-its-kind assessment designed to measure the leadership behaviors that drive organizational culture, workforce engagement, accountability, and performance across healthcare

organizations.

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As healthcare systems face mounting pressures with workforce burnout, financial challenges, and increasing demands for better patient experiences, effective leadership has never been more critical. Yet many organizations lack meaningful tools to identify leadership strengths, uncover development opportunities, and align leadership behaviors with organizational goals.

 

The Empathetics Leadership Development Profile addresses this need by providing a comprehensive assessment of the leadership capabilities most critical to healthcare success, including empathy, accountability, communication, trust-building, collaboration, decision-making, and culture development. The assessment delivers both individualized feedback for leaders and aggregated organizational insights that help executive teams identify trends, gaps, and opportunities across their leadership population.

 

"Healthcare has long recognized empathy as essential to exceptional patient care, but empathy is equally important in leadership," said Helen Riess, MD, Empathetics Founder. "One of the greatest misconceptions in leadership is the belief that leaders must choose between being empathic and holding people accountable. In reality, the most effective leaders demonstrate both. Empathy builds trust, strengthens communication, and creates the foundation for accountability. Leaders who understand the people they serve and lead are better equipped to navigate change, make difficult decisions, and inspire high performance. The Leadership Development Profile provides organizations with a powerful new way to understand and develop those capabilities."

 

Developed specifically for healthcare environments, the Leadership Development Profile reflects more than 15 years of research and practical experience helping healthcare organizations strengthen leadership effectiveness and workplace culture. Unlike generic leadership assessments, the tool is grounded in the realities of healthcare, where leadership decisions directly impact clinicians, staff, patients, and communities.

 

The assessment evaluates leadership behaviors across multiple dimensions and provides targeted recommendations to help leaders improve their effectiveness. Organizations receive a comprehensive view of leadership strengths and opportunities, enabling them to make informed investments in leadership development and culture transformation.

 

"Healthcare organizations invest significant resources in salaries, services and infrastructure, yet many don’t recognize that a single interaction with a physician can undo all the work to create a positive patient experience," said Stan Nowak, Empathetics CEO and Board Chair. "The Empathetics Leadership Development Profile changes that. It gives organizations a clear view of how leadership is creating headwinds or tailwinds in helping physicians gain and keep the trust of their patients, and help them live healthier lives. More importantly, it is the first instrument for developing leaders who can drive accountability, foster engagement, and create environments where both employees and patients thrive."

 

The Leadership Development Profile has already been successfully deployed within leading healthcare organizations, including large integrated health systems and academic medical centers. In one engagement, Empathetics assessed senior leaders responsible for more than 4,000 employees across multiple divisions, delivering personalized development plans and enterprise-wide insights into leadership strengths and opportunities.

 

The launch comes at a time when healthcare organizations are increasingly recognizing that effective leadership is a critical determinant of workforce stability, clinician and employee well-being and retention, patient experience, and sustainable organizational performance.

 

"The future of healthcare will be shaped by leaders who can balance high expectations with human connection," Dr. Riess added. "Empathy is not a soft skill. It is a leadership skill. And when paired with accountability, it becomes a powerful driver of culture, trust, engagement, and results. We created the Leadership Development Profile to help organizations measure, develop, and strengthen the leadership behaviors that matter most."

 

About Empathetics

 

Empathetics is the first and only evidence-based empathy education solution proven to make empathy a learnable skill. Rooted in neuroscience and validated through rigorous clinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Empathetics transforms the science of empathy into practical, measurable skills for leaders, clinicians and care teams. Results show significant improvements in patient experience and up to 83% improvement in employee retention among health system clients.

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For media inquiries, please contact PR@empathetics.com.