MD/MBA degee

[doc44ever]

---

Members don't see this ad.

What is the benefit of having a MD/MBA degree? Do you run your own hospital or something?

 

[FutureCTDoc]

Which MBA? Let's say from HBS, Wharton, Tuck or Booth you could go into PE, HF, VC, IB or Consulting. From Darden or Kelley MM IBs (Piper, Raymond James), MM PE, Second tier consulting firms (Accenture, Booz, Monitor), industry (Medtronics, Pfizer) or go to a decent admin gig. A C-level job at a decent hospital may take 15 or more years. MBAs from the top 30 are the only ones that are worth it i.e. Ivy League, Stanford, UCLA Anderson, Berkley Haas and Indiana. Lower tier MBAs aren't worth it and I would recommend at least 2 years and preferably 4 or 5 of business experience.

 

[deleted393650]

I would say that the MBA part of the MD/MBA is a waste. I think that the extra MBA does not make it easier to get a job than with just a MD. Just get the MD, the MBA gives you unnecessary debt. One final note, look in the Med business forums for more information if you are still interested.

 

[NickNaylor]

Getting a MD to not go into medicine is a complete waste of time, money, and happiness.

 

[HH Holmes]

Well everyone seems to be negative about MD/MBA. Personally, I wouldn't get one, but the head of my local hospital's ER has an MD/MBA and it definitely shines through.

When I volunteered, it was the most efficient ward in the hospital... He had monthly reports which included detailed accounts of EVERYTHING that went on the the ER. In the staff/break lounge there were charts that showed the efficiency of the ER increasing every year. Discharge and admission times were cut in half, and it looked like equipment and supply usage was becoming more and more conservative.

I can also see a practical use in a private practice setting. Running a business is a pretty big task... Without business know how and furthered education, you could bankrupt a practice in a matter of months.

Will you run a hospital because you have an MBA? No. Will it help in certain scenarios and possibly look good on an application/during an interview? Yes. Is it worth the extra time (probably a year or two) and the extra money? That's up for you to decide.

Getting a MD to not go into medicine is a complete waste of time, money, and happiness.

I have to agree. Getting a medical degree, whether it be an MD, DO or even a PA and not putting it to actual medical use is a complete waste of time. Get the MBA if you think you'll use it, not for the extra three letters at the end of your job title (which may or may not stroke your ego).

Personally, I'd be interested in attaining an MPH (Public Health) or an MPP (Public Policy) to better the medicine in either under served areas, or in local/state/national government (respectively).

 

[MossPoh]

Which MBA? Let's say from HBS, Wharton, Tuck or Booth you could go into PE, HF, VC, IB or Consulting. From Darden or Kelley MM IBs (Piper, Raymond James), MM PE, Second tier consulting firms (Accenture, Booz, Monitor), industry (Medtronics, Pfizer) or go to a decent admin gig. A C-level job at a decent hospital may take 15 or more years. MBAs from the top 30 are the only ones that are worth it i.e. Ivy League, Stanford, UCLA Anderson, Berkley Haas and Indiana. Lower tier MBAs aren't worth it and I would recommend at least 2 years and preferably 4 or 5 of business experience.

It just depends on your goals. For many people in the medical fields, even an online MBA is fine since the goal is to learn more about practice management. There are certain places and even online MBAs that cater more towards healthcare fields. Just as there are certain schools in that list that may be at the top overall, but are crap for certain areas.

I won't say it is "worthless" because there are things you can do with it, but it is worthless to go to medical school with the aspiration of doing pretty much any of the jobs listed there.

 

[Long Way to Go]

Well everyone seems to be negative about MD/MBA. Personally, I wouldn't get one, but the head of my local hospital's ER has an MD/MBA and it definitely shines through.

When I volunteered, it was the most efficient ward in the hospital... He had monthly reports which included detailed accounts of EVERYTHING that went on the the ER. In the staff/break lounge there were charts that showed the efficiency of the ER increasing every year. Discharge and admission times were cut in half, and it looked like equipment and supply usage was becoming more and more conservative.

I can also see a practical use in a private practice setting. Running a business is a pretty big task... Without business know how and furthered education, you could bankrupt a practice in a matter of months.

Getting to the point where having an MBA will be useful (department head, partner in a fairly large private practice) when you compare it to the opportunity cost of getting one (seeing more patients, working more hours, enjoying life more) will take a lot of time.

I haven't seen any MD/MBA programs that are less than 6 years in length. An MD by itself is four years and an MBA by itself is 2 years. So you really aren't saving any time (or money!) by doing a combined MD/MBA. If circumstances in your life make you say "Hey, I would like to get an MBA" in fifteen years, then go ahead and do it then.

 

[HH Holmes]

Getting to the point where having an MBA will be useful (department head, partner in a fairly large private practice) when you compare it to the opportunity cost of getting one (seeing more patients, working more hours, enjoying life more) will take a lot of time.

Yes, I have to agree, but getting a solid, guaranteed position as a physician is also a long and tiring process. I think the OP just needs to know the realistic boundaries of having the dual degree, and know that, at the end of the day, the MD will (well, should) always come first.

 

[FutureCTDoc]

It just depends on your goals. For many people in the medical fields, even an online MBA is fine since the goal is to learn more about practice management. There are certain places and even online MBAs that cater more towards healthcare fields. Just as there are certain schools in that list that may be at the top overall, but are crap for certain areas.

I won't say it is "worthless" because there are things you can do with it, but it is worthless to go to medical school with the aspiration of doing pretty much any of the jobs listed there.

Why? Non-clinical jobs are becoming much more common, doing IB, PE, consulting and VC are certainly better on average in terms of remuneration. Also a large number of people find that clinical practice is miserable, that the pay is poor in relation to the hours worked and that they would be more valued elsewhere. Having an MD or DO makes it easier to do healthcare PE, VC and consulting in particular.

The only MBAs that are worth are top 30. If you want to learn practice management skills, books, DVDs and conferences are a lot cheaper, only do an MBA if you want to advance your career or shift careers. The point of an MBA is learning from your classmates and networking. Lower tier MBAs usually have poorer students and it is more difficult to learn from them.

 

[Law2Doc]

Why? Non-clinical jobs are becoming much more common, doing IB, PE, consulting and VC are certainly better on average in terms of remuneration. Also a large number of people find that clinical practice is miserable, that the pay is poor in relation to the hours worked and that they would be more valued elsewhere. Having an MD or DO makes it easier to do healthcare PE, VC and consulting in particular.

The only MBAs that are worth are top 30. If you want to learn practice management skills, books, DVDs and conferences are a lot cheaper, only do an MBA if you want to advance your career or shift careers. The point of an MBA is learning from your classmates and networking. Lower tier MBAs usually have poorer students and it is more difficult to learn from them.

Don't go to med school to work in IB, PE, consulting or VC. The few that do come out of med school and go these routes tend to be people who got to the end of med school and realized they didn't want to be a doctor, almost never folks who saw a reason to do a combined path. Also in all of these fields, you are better off not having the MBA to start. The MBA is something they send you for on their dime AFTER you have accumulated some experience. An MBA is not a degree to open the door to work in business. It's not a skill creating education. It's a skill enhancing education. Meaning you learn business by doing first, and then go back and get an MBA in order to take the next step. As a result, the top 20 or so MBA programs won't even consider you without work experience first. Not because they are being mean, but because that's the way the MBA works -- they aren't going to teach you what you need to know to do business, but instead to build on what you know.

Also, an MBA isn't the place you go to learn how to run a medical practice. There aren't courses on this. It's more the kind of place you go to learn how to do management. A typical MBA program focuses on one or more of finance, accounting, management, marketing, operations/consulting, economics, maybe entrepreneurship. There are MBAs marketed in the healthcare field which focus on the health side of these things, but they still tend to have large industry focus rather than how to run a small office. For running your medical practice, you are better off reading a few "how-to" books and surrounding yourself with the appropriate ancillary professionals (lawyer, accountant, financial planner).

So in short, there isn't a great need for doing the MD/MBA. Even if you are planning on going into hospital administration this may not be the smartest route -- you probably can get there with just the MD, and if you find you can't you can always add an executive MBA at the end. I wouldn't bother with the dual degrees. The dual degree is only popular of late because the crummy job market is making it popular for folks to stay in school as long as possible. But you can accomplish this better by doing a long residency and fellowship and at least get money coming in rather than being paid out.

 

[RapplixGmed]

Trust me, OP by the time you get to med school, you will want to minimize the number of degrees you need to get and just want to finish your training.

If you're in HS, think of all the time you have spent in school up to this point, then consider that if you include residency, you are less than halfway done with all the training you need to do to become full fledged doctor without any extra degrees. At some point, you just want to be able to start your life and to hell with all those extra degrees. You can do an MBA online when you're an attending if you really need it.

If you want to run a hospital, think about getting a Masters of Health Administration (Not the same thing as an MBA).

 

[Ugen]

I haven't seen any MD/MBA programs that are less than 6 years in length. An MD by itself is four years and an MBA by itself is 2 years. So you really aren't saving any time (or money!) by doing a combined MD/MBA. If circumstances in your life make you say "Hey, I would like to get an MBA" in fifteen years, then go ahead and do it then.

On the contrary, I haven't seen any MD/MBA programs that are more than 5 years in length. For example:

Penn: http://www.med.upenn.edu/educ_combdeg/mdmba.shtml
Harvard: http://www.hbs.edu/mba/academics/jointdegree/HBS-HMS/mdmba.html
Columbia: http://ps.columbia.edu/education/dual-degree-programs

etc.

 

[kdburton]

Getting to the point where having an MBA will be useful (department head, partner in a fairly large private practice) when you compare it to the opportunity cost of getting one (seeing more patients, working more hours, enjoying life more) will take a lot of time.

I haven't seen any MD/MBA programs that are less than 6 years in length. An MD by itself is four years and an MBA by itself is 2 years. So you really aren't saving any time (or money!) by doing a combined MD/MBA. If circumstances in your life make you say "Hey, I would like to get an MBA" in fifteen years, then go ahead and do it then.

At the school I went to it was 5 years. You give up some elective time from each degree to make this happen. And part of your MS4 year includes MBA classes as well. I personally think, however, that getting an MBA without at least a couple years of business experience is not as beneficial (which is why many MBA programs generally require this). Many department heads do have MBAs though and its probably easier to get the MBA if combined with your MD than to try to get it later when you're potentially in a busy medical practice.

 

[Mattchiavelli]

Adding an MBA is also an option if you don't match you MS4 year, being in school still helps keep loans from going into full repayment and you can get some flexibility to re-interview in a year compared with having an actual job- I've known a couple of people that do that.