Graduate school can provide ticket to success
Graduate school can provide ticket to success
Master’s degrees help physicians meet challenges
It wasn’t that long ago that physicians spent their time treating patients, relying on a part-time clerk to send out the bills. But in today’s rapidly changing health care marketplace, physicians need to do more than just keep up with the latest in treatment methods.
Today’s physician needs a vast store of business knowledge that was unheard of 10 or 15 years ago. To run a successful practice, physicians need to know about contracting, information systems, strategic management, reimbursement techniques, government regulations . . . the list goes on and on. That’s why graduate schools across the country are offering master’s degrees in business design for physicians and other health care professionals.
Some participants are physicians who want to move into an executive role, such as medical director of an insurance program. Others plan to start their own health care-related business.
But most physicians who go back to business school simply want to combine clinical practice and business management in their own organization and are looking for the tools they need to work in today’s health care industry without bringing in consultants to help them handle contracting and insurance matters.
"Physicians need to know more about the business side of what they do. To work smarter, they can’t deal with just the healing side," says Mandy Brooks, MBA, assistant director of the MBA for Physician Executives Program at Kennesaw (GA) State University, just north of Atlanta.
Many physician organizations, formed in response to the growing power of hospitals and managed care, haven’t been successful as organizations. As a result, physicians have lost economic power and autonomy, points out John F. McCracken, executive director of the Alliance for Medical Management Education at the University of Texas at Dallas.
The Alliance was formed by the University of Texas at Dallas School of Management and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and offers a master’s of science in medical management for physicians.
The need for physicians who are well-versed in business matters is particularly acute as physician practices are joining together, McCracken notes.
"Physicians are beginning to recognize that in order to succeed, they are going to have to form stable, physician-led, physician-driven organizations. There is a significant need for educated physicians and not more consultants. Clearly, physician organizations have to be led by physicians. They can’t be led by non-physicians," McCracken says.
Physicians who enroll in McCracken’s program all have heavy management responsibilities but no formal training in the things they are called on to do as leaders of their practices, he adds.
"It has become necessary — and not just nice any more — for physicians who move into management positions to have a lot of good management and business skills as well as being good practitioners of medicine. The whole health care environment is getting quite competitive," says Heide Wilde, MA, ABD, assistant director for the administrative medicine program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Like most graduate programs for physicians, the University of Wisconsin’s master’s in administrative medicine program evolved from an on-campus program, Wilde says.
"We became quite conscious that graduate education for physicians was needed, but in a new format. Physicians can’t take two years out of their practice and go back to school," she adds.
The University of South Florida in Tampa began offering a physician MBA program in 1991 after more and more physicians were enrolling in their executive MBA program, says Susan Stevens, program director.
"They felt there was a real need for physician leaders and physicians with business skills, and decided to get their MBA," Stevens says.
But participants in the regular MBA program had to attend classes one day a week.
"Even the local doctors found it difficult to concentrate on a regular MBA program when they had an active ongoing practice," Stevens says.
The Kennesaw program is operated in an executive MBA program format and includes the same program as a traditional MBA program, Brooks says.
"Part of the reason it has worked so well is that we don’t have physicians dealing in just physician-related business. We show how businesses outside of health care work and how that can tie into the physician’s business," Brooks says.
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