Any physician who recognizes that good business skills is essential in medicine is ahead of the curve:
“Medical schools have done a horrible job preparing physicians to enter into private practice. They don’t give them any understanding of debits and credits, what it’s like to run a small business. They’re prepared to be clinicians, not to run their practice.”
Some sort of business training should be mandatory prior to becoming a physician.
Related posts:
- My take: EHR adoption, MDs with MBAs, allegations
- Florida gives doctors the finger
- Woefully unprepared
- Doctors leaving private practice, and where to go next
- Business and medicine
- Why would a doctor stop seeing patients?
- Too many doctors?
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{ 2 comments }
Surrendering ones voters registration should be mandatory when one is caught demanding new mandates.
Seriously, I don’t think that is the right ticket for a couple of reasons:
1. Not everyone is going into any sort of business. Many are going to spend their careers in academia or government.
2. Many who are in the private sector will never and have no intentions of ever taking any management role–just plan to do what they are told and take what they are given. I don’ think that is smart but that is their choice.
3. Most successful practicing physicians attain that business success without any of the specialized BS skills taught in B-school. Common sense and a cynical attitude are more important to the small scale enterpreneur like a solo physician than learning to be a powerpoint and excell jockey. I have been tempted to get an MBA but when I look at the curriculum I just can’t make it relevant to what I am and will likely be doing. By simple math and common sense (and basic accounting which I picked up on my own), I have been able to make every practice that I have run solo and in a large group profitable–in at least one case pulling rabbits out of a hat that the MBA couldn’t get it out of. It doesn’t take B-school to read a spreadsheet and root out the crap–just a lot of questions: Mostly “Just exactly how did you get that number?” and persistence in asking until you get the truth.
Considering the ethical perversions of the MBA profession, Doctors with MBA’s scare me.
I agree that business education is mandatory, but I do not think an MBA is necessary unless you want to be an academic department head or administrative physician. You may do as our group did and hire an MBA. Ironically our administrator makes about the same money as our associate physicians, but with much better hours, more vacation, and gets much more respect from the senior partners.
Please be aware that senior physicians largely view younger docs as less dedicated, entitled nine-to-fivers who are overly idealistic and not willing to turn the crank very hard. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article reinforces the belief among senior physicians that young physicians “are not the same as we are”. I would argue that the reason is largely that the goose lays rotten, rather that golden, eggs nowadays and there is little incentive to kill yourself for little marginal benefit.
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