MBA needed after MD/DO degree?

[Hippocratesintraining]

I'm going through medical school and I dunno, maybe I'm a glutton for punishment and I also know this won't pertain to me for the next handful of years, but is the MD/MBA combo a worthwhile endeavour for wanting to increase salary in addition to actually being a practicing physician? I'd rule out opening a private practice for this question because clearly the MBA would be beneficial but we all know hospitals and the suits are going to try and eat up every private practice on earth.

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[cj_cregg]

MBA may increase salary some if you take on an administrative role and are in a lower paying specialty. If you're in something like ortho or interventional cards, the likelihood is slim that time away from doing knee replacements and caths to do admin stuff will be financially beneficial. If you are not doing any admin role and just being a regular doctor like all your partners, I wouldn't expect any significant salary increase just because you also have an MBA.

 

[mistafab]

I'm a gluten for punishment

As long as you’re not celiac you should be fine.

 

[GoSpursGo]

The answer I always give to the “should I get an extra degree” question is “what are you going to do with it?” If you don’t already know how the MBA is going to help, then it likely isn’t going to be helpful; conversely, if you later figure out that it would be useful, some residency and fellowships may have a pathway that you can use to get additional degrees while in training and possibly at a discount.

 

[pazzer2]

MBA is helpful if you want to change careers. For that a 2 year full time program is very helpful because of the summer internships. Its usually done to transition to another career (Finance, pharma, consulting, etc). For this a Top MBA program is essential.

But if you're going to stay working as a physician then I don't think an MBA helps much at all -- unless you want to go into hospital administration. And even that, only helps marginally.

You can learn nearly everything taught in business school on your own.