All you business Majors (or atleast have experience in some business classes)

i did a business minor. in my experience, the intro to business management classes are chock full of lists of stuff to memorize but doesn't really teach you how to run a business too well. unless you take an intensive class that deals with writing business plans, you might not get too much out of it. out of the rest of the classes i had to take, accounting was the most boring, and marketing and finance were the most interesting. as far as running your own practice, there isn't one or a range of classes that can give you the skill set to deal with insurance companies, to deal with workplace problems, to work on scheduling/learning how to use medisoft or other scheduling softwares. those classes will simply introduce you to the world of money and define lots of terms and stuff.

i'd say that if you want to be smart with the rediculous amounts of money you're going to make in the future, at least take a finance class- it teaches you a ton about managing your own money. Also, find out if there is a business/health class or something.

amwatts0322 said:

I have only 7 required credit hours for all of next year, meaning I have to take 17+ credit hours of fluff. Anyways, it is time for register up for classes, and I was wondering if taking some business courses would be a good way to prepare me for possibly running my own clinic some day? If so, what courses do you recommend???

Thanks.

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I was a business finance major and completely disagree with the above poster. You will not learn to be proficient in business finance unless you enter that profession. Like medicine, most of the learning in Finance comes from doing and not book learning. Taking finance classes will not help you run a clinic. As far as managing your own money, the most savy investors I know don't have degrees in finance, they have educated themselves by reading kiplingers, etc. In reality, unless you are on the floor of the NYSE, finance is not so dynamic where you have to be an expert. If you don't want to mess with it at all, you can always hire somebody.

If you are going to take anything, take as much accounting (business and financial) as possible. That is the only intro business class where you will actually learn a skill (not be proficient at it, but learn the basics) and accounting is the language of business.

Old Grunt said:

I was a business finance major and completely disagree with the above poster. You will not learn to be proficient in business finance unless you enter that profession. Like medicine, most of the learning in Finance comes from doing and not book learning. Taking finance classes will not help you run a clinic.

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thats exactly what I said.....

finance will teach you how to spend your own money, not how to run a private practice.

also, a good book I'd recommend even if you don't end up taking a class in finance- Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel.

I don't know about your school but my undergrad has health care management classes at the undergrad level. This is mainly because we have a top health administration program here. I haven't taken any of their classes yet but i hear they discuss the structural setup of the healthcare system, how payment is issued (ie dealing with insurance), and management of staff. I don't know if classes like these are commonly offered at other institutions but definitely something to look into.

yaniv34 said:

thats exactly what I said.....

finance will teach you how to spend your own money, not how to run a private practice.

also, a good book I'd recommend even if you don't end up taking a class in finance- Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel.

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Maybe I read your post incorrectly.

At any rate, you recommended taking a finance class and not accounting. I recommended the opposite.

Unless the OP has grand plans of doing an IPO with his clinic, accounting will be more relevant.

Even more useful would be a class that taught you how to deal with billing and insurance as the above poster mentioned. That would be my first choice.

I pretty much did the same thing except I saw the free time at the end of college and took the pre-reqs beforehand and filled out the 4th year with another degree in business.


Here is the break down as I see it

Marketing is the most fun but it is the psych of business and you won't really need to advertise in medicine unless you plan to be one of those "qualitie" doctors that advertise on Public Access.

Finance - Very important. Very simple math, calculus almost never required until MBA. You'll most likely be handling student loans to pay for med school or paying for undergrad, understanding market prices, interest calculations and all the wonderful ways the banks and credit cards jack you for more money is good to know and to watch your back for scams and nasty rates. It will be very helpful when applying for loans and probably later when you re-finance you loans (just knowing that you can re-finance and when to is huge!!). Later when You start your private practice knowing how to get the appropriate loans to start it up will be important. then later to invest your well earned capital for retirement and for your kids trust fund. Having a even a single class of finance will help you to understand how that part of our economy works and hopefully motivate you to keep your credit score high to get better loan rates later when you need it.

Accounting - Boring as sin but vital to making sure your business stays afloat and you don't have to go crying back to a public hospital becuase you couldn't keep track of the payroll, insurance billing, office rental costs, medical supplies, overhead costs. . . Like any business, in private practice money comes in and then leaves through many different methods. Some months more out than in. In the beginning of the business you may not have a bookkeeper and you may have to everything until then and knowing how to do that is important. Later to be able to reorganize cash flow etc would be for an expanding, bordering on large practice with multiple physicians... Rememebr that although we are their to help people we still need to provide a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. Accounting will be crucial whether you decide to work with insurance companies our work for cash on the barrel head (you charge less for your services and cut out the insurance which probably on give you a fraction of what they should)

Business policy - not really that important it deals with negotiating within highly competitive businesses and to strategically

That's it from me

oh yeah have some fun too take an art class or film or something.

Unless you are planning to get a minor in business I would consider some economics, political science and business law to get a bigger picture about how things work. Just my thought on the subject.

ACE2Performance said:

Unless you are planning to get a minor in business I would consider some economics, political science and business law to get a bigger picture about how things work. Just my thought on the subject.

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If you want practical stuff, I tend to agree with those who suggested business law and accounting type courses. These will apply to running a small business as well as a big one. Econ is nice to have to be an educated person, but won't help you do anything. Management, marketing and finance will be geared toward bigger businesses and often won't help the typical medical practice.
Many business schools offer "entrepreneurship" courses which put heavy emphasis on business plans and thinking through starting up and troubleshooting for a small business -- this could be helpful with respect to starting a medical practice, as it has some of the same issues as any service industry.

But at this stage of the game it might pay to look at it as getting some background in business, on which you can supplement by reading "how to" books later on, rather than trying to learn what you need to know now.

I agree with a lot of the posters but I would like to emphasise the importance of business oral and written communication classes. They have helped me tremendously in all aspects of my life and I use them particularly for important correspondence for my father's practice and he always says he wishes he had those skills because he knows how much it would help him.

I would also suggest any kind of entrepenurship classes if possible - I thought they were really helpful, particularly when doing the projects that I had to do where you had to start and run your own fake businesses.