Graduate-level work presents many options
Graduate-level work presents many options
On-campus work combined with independent study
If you’re thinking of supplementing your MD with a business degree, there are a variety of options open to you.
You can choose to work on a master’s in business administration (MBA) with a concentration in medical management, a master’s degree in administrative medicine, a master’s in medical management, or take courses to meet your continuing medical education requirements that also can be applied to graduate degrees.
Schools that offer graduate degrees for physicians make it as easy as possible for doctors to continue their practice and work on their degrees part-time. But you should plan on spending several weeks a year on campus for at least two years at a cost of $25,000 or more, not counting travel and lodging.
Most of the programs involve a combination of sessions on campus with independent study, research projects, and distance learning via the Internet, conference calls, and faxes.
20 hours of studying every week
Make no mistake, however: The work is intensive. The University of California at Irvine warns potential students in its health care executive MBA program that they should be prepared to spend 15 to 20 hours a week in addition to attending classes once a month for three and a half consecutive days over a 24-month period.
Participants in the program offered by the Alliance for Medical Management Education in Dallas attend class from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the week-long sessions. The program, a joint venture of the University of Texas at Dallas School of Management and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, offers six week-long modules.
During their campus sessions, participants find it valuable to meet their fellow students from other geographic markets, learn from each other, and trade information about managed care. Often, students from different parts of the country collaborate on group projects via the Internet.
"The physicians who attend our program come from different parts of the country and different health care markets. Some are deeply penetrated by managed care; others are just beginning," says Heide Wilde, MBA, ABD, assistant director of the administrative medicine program at the Univers ity of Wisconsin at Madison.
"What differentiates our program from a regular MBA is that even though the professors are from business schools, the curriculum is geared toward clinicians. All coursework and exams are drawn from health care," says Wilde.
The program at the University of South Florida in Tampa doesn’t different a lot from a generic MBA program, although a couple of courses, "Managing Managed Care" and "Legal Aspects of Health Systems," are geared toward physicians, says Susan Stevens, program director,
Students attend two-week campus sessions three times a year for two years in core courses such as taxation, accounting, economics, and business skills, according to Stevens. During the months between sessions, they do research projects and take exams at their own pace.
The faculty for the master’s degree in medical management offered by the Alliance for Medical Management Education — a joint venture of the University of Texas at Dallas School of Manage ment and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas — come from both schools. The program is divided into eight week-long modules spaced every three months. "We built this one from the ground up. It’s totally different from anything in the school of management," says John F. McCracken, executive director
The course encompasses eight key areas: leadership in medical organizations; financial decision making in health care; management control in health care expense management; quality management and patient satisfaction; health care information systems; strategic management of physician organizations; managing change in health care; and health care policy and regulation, a class that meets in Washington, DC, and includes meetings with legislators and federal officials.
At least two programs offer participants a chance to commit gradually to the full master’s degree program and to earn continuing medical education credits in the meantime. The graduate program in medical management sponsored by the American College of Physician Executives in Tampa, FL, offers participants a chance to take some preliminary programs that count as CME credit hours and apply them to a graduate degree. Participants have 10 years to complete the full master’s degree program.
ACPE offers most of the preliminary courses at locations across the country, according to Charisse Jimenez, who works with the graduate program.
When participants have completed 218 CME course hours and the corresponding tests, they are eligible to attend the Capstone Course, a nine-day on-campus course at their choice of Tulane University in New Orleans or Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Completion of the Capstone Course gives participants a certification in medical management and meets the prerequisite for entrance into the master’s program at either university.
Participants in the Alliance for Medical Management Education program may also use the week-long study modules for CME credit.
Students work at their own pace and take the modules a la carte, or complete the entire two-year program. The faculty and students all stay at a conference center at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
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