What is the point of an MD/MBA?

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What can you achieve with an MD/MBA? I can see how it may be applicable to running a private practice, but wouldn’t physicians hire an accountant/business person to handle the business side of things anyways?

Also, I have heard that MBAs are only worth it if they come from prestigious business schools. Is this true?

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Practices often like to have a physician that can be the bridge between the interests of partners and other parties. Having a MBA can be greatly beneficial in this regard, if you get one after residency so you can actually use the skill set, which you'll lose if you get a concurrent MD/MBA more likely than not. Finally, it can make for a good bridge to gtfo of medicine. Name certainly matters.
 
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If you want to complete a residency and practice medicine, get an MD. If you want to enter the healthcare industry as a businessman, get an MBA from an elite institution with a concentration in healthcare finance or healthcare management. If you're not sure if you want to do one or the other, then make up for mind. Don't enroll in a cash cow joint degree program.
 
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What can you achieve with an MD/MBA? I can see how it may be applicable to running a private practice, but wouldn’t physicians hire an accountant/business person to handle the business side of things anyways?

Also, I have heard that MBAs are only worth it if they come from prestigious business schools. Is this true?

Far more useful than an MD/PhD.
 
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The docs I know who have done this have not done both concurrently but have done it through executive programs while in practice. Most often, they have a role in large, multi-specialty group practice. That said, the docs I know are in academic practices.

There is a lot to know about human resources & labor, marketing and market share, branding, public relations, payor mix, accounting, balance sheets, real estate holdings & leases, contracts and subconstracts, etc. There are docs who respresent the physicians in the practice on a board of directors but some docs want to know what the other guys know, too.

The MD/PhD is a good choice for someone who wants to be a PhD investigator with a small role in direct patient care. It is not a good choice, or useful, for anyone else.
 
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Its not for people who want to practice as both at the same time. If you want to eventually go into the business side of medicine (medical supply etc) or people who are interested in policy (hospital level or beyond) and manage healthcare professionals after having practiced as one. I've heard so many doctors ironically quip that after all their schooling they are still subordinated to someone with a MBA in a hospital who has no idea about how medicine works.
 
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If you have to ask... you probably don't need it. I know that MBAs themselves don't matter much unless they're from a top school but MD/MBAs are another thing completely. I'm not sure how those work in terms of value of the school you do it at.
 
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Its not for people who want to practice as both at the same time. If you want to eventually go into the business side of medicine (medical supply etc) or people who are interested in policy (hospital level or beyond) and manage healthcare professionals after having practiced as one. I've heard so many doctors ironically quip that after all their schooling they are still subordinated to someone with a MBA in a hospital who has no idea about how medicine works.

By the same token, the vast majority of those doctors who complain about being 'subordinate' to MBAs or other administrators have no idea how the hospital runs. I've seen my fair share of boneheaded administrative maneuvers over the year, but that pales in comparison to the hubris of physicians thinking that they can manage things better.
 
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Practices often like to have a physician that can be the bridge between the interests of partners and other parties. Having a MBA can be greatly beneficial in this regard, if you get one after residency so you can actually use the skill set, which you'll lose if you get a concurrent MD/MBA more likely than not. Finally, it can make for a good bridge to gtfo of medicine. Name certainly matters.
How does someone enter an MBA program after residency without an undergrad business background? Also, is the program completed while working as a doc?
 
How does someone enter an MBA program after residency without an undergrad business background? Also, is the program completed while working as a doc?
You can enter a MBA with zero business experience easily, just do well on the GMAT. Given that you would be a physician, they would see an immediate application for your business degree, as physicians are in leadership positions by default. There are executive MBA programs at some of the better business schools out there that meet on weekends or a limited number of days a week, which generally take two years and are focused in a specific area of business, such as healthcare. Full-time MBAs are generally better, as they allow you to develop stronger networks, but they are much more time intensive and will have a massive opportunity cost for a physician.
 
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The docs I know who have done this have not done both concurrently but have done it through executive programs while in practice. Most often, they have a role in large, multi-specialty group practice. That said, the docs I know are in academic practices.

There is a lot to know about human resources & labor, marketing and market share, branding, public relations, payor mix, accounting, balance sheets, real estate holdings & leases, contracts and subconstracts, etc. There are docs who respresent the physicians in the practice on a board of directors but some docs want to know what the other guys know, too.

The MD/PhD is a good choice for someone who wants to be a PhD investigator with a small role in direct patient care. It is not a good choice, or useful, for anyone else.
Is an executive program just an MBA program offered by a university? Also, how is this done while in practice-- Online classes?
 
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Is an executive program just an MBA program offered by a university? Also, how is this done while in practice-- Online classes?
An executive MBA is an MBA Lite. It's designed for those who have a different primary degree and career path but want a good amount of business training to supplement that. They're good degrees if you plan to stay in medicine (or whatever field you're in), but they are not viewed as comparable to full MBAs and don't allow the same amount of flexibility for career change. I've always been one to minimize risk and keep as many doors open as possible, so I opted to do a full MBA after med school even though it required significantly more work than an executive MBA. I did it while working full-time over the course of 2.75 years.

@Lawper: I'll do one, but it's gong to take some time because of the amount of research I'll have to do. I know very little about MD/MBA combined courses right now since I want even planning on an MBA when I started med school.
 
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I know that MBAs themselves don't matter much unless they're from a top school
Oh Aldol, I had sooooo much respect for you. Stick to what you know (premed, MCAT, etc) and not ^^^.

My MBA is from a good school, def not top 20 and without it? I was a welfare mom with a BA. It's not the degree, it's what you choose to do with it.
What can you achieve with an MD/MBA? I have heard that MBAs are only worth it if they come from prestigious business schools. Is this true?
The MD/MBAs I know entered as physicians, then got the exec MBA (shortened version of full MBA program) after they left clinical practice. Typically, they are the CEO/COO of a very large, multi-specialty clinic/hospital. It takes a certain panache to bridge the clinical workings (patients + charting) with the business side (insurance company rejections, contract negotiations with incoming physicians, strategy for future growth including outsourcing 3rd party vendors for revenue cycle, etc...).

I got asked why it was important at my last client and will say this (apologies now for any physicians - I don't know you or how you operate):

The physicians on the various internal boards/groups (security, grievance, etc.) would never have listened to a sheer MBA because an MBA does not generally get into the nats of clinical practice nor understand the minutiae that physicians have to deal with every day. RVUs, coding, contract, patient calls, updating diagnosis for labs, etc. etc. etc.
 
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@Lawper: I'll do one, but it's gong to take some time because of the amount of research I'll have to do. I know very little about MD/MBA combined courses right now since I want even planning on an MBA when I started med school.

Take your time. It doesn't have to be strictly MD/MBA but more like the benefits of getting an MBA for students/physicians in training etc.

I'm more curious on how to treat an MBA like another fellowship after residency.
 
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That's funny, I just heard about a friend the other day who got his MD/MBA and is in his ortho residency now. I feel like after allopathic training, an MBA wouldn't be too difficult.
 
I don’t think there’s a lot of benefit to an MD MBA degree for someone who is interested in a residency program and practicing medicine. The time to get one is 10 or so years into your career when you are in a position to move into real leadership roles and decrease or eliminate your clinical practice. That’s where part time or executive MBAs come in to play. You’re the student they’re designed for. Successful people with leadership experience looking to go to the next level. The business folks get their companies to pay for them and go full time, the physicians, business owners, and other high earners pay their own way and look into alternate programs because of the lost income.


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Il Destriero
 
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after allopathic (osteopathic - included here) training, an MBA wouldn't be too difficult.
I got one ;) MBA's now are a dime-a-dozen but they are also useful. Mine focused on strategic finance but in order to get it, I had to take a lot of rudimentary, u-grad b-school courses like accounting, marketing, human resources, production systems and organization management. U-grad was mostly book learning/theory. MBA was all case studies and papers and presentations and more papers and more presentations and you get the idea...

My portfolio class was take $10,000 and whoever invests the most and gains the most determines the A's. All SEC regulations were in place, had to legitimize the buy/sell decisions. Strategic finance was all M&A on the buy/sell side... Law was all about UCC and application of it to different cases.
 
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My MBA is from a good school, def not top 20 and without it? I was a welfare mom with a BA. It's not the degree, it's what you choose to do with it.

It's what kind of networking you can get at the MBA program you choose, which is associated with the strength of the program itself. Here's a concise recent blog post about it: The Alarming Decline Of The MBA’s ‘Value Added Ratio’. If you navigate to the second page, you'll see some of the calculated value added ratios for the top 25 schools and there's a pretty big drop-off even among those schools. One could always find a problem with the methodology but people have calculated similar things like return on investment before: Cornell (Johnson) - pg.11.

Of course, one could argue that these pre-/post- calculations might not take into account people who went from jobless to job with the MBA. At the end of the day, the business world is about the connections you make and networking and that's highly correlated with where you go for that MBA. It's not impossible to network well from a "good school, def not top 20" but it's also not impossible to match at MGH if you're not at HMS. It's just harder and fewer people do it.
 
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So I'm considering maybe doing an MD/MBA because it's offered by my school and my school has a pretty reputable (maybe not top 10, but definitely top 30) business program. That being said, I'm not sure because I'm really not a business kind of person: I know very little about economics, marketing, accounting, finances, etc. In fact, when people start talking about those sorts of things, it all kind of goes over my head. But I would like to maybe go into administration one day in my future, and I do think it's important for doctors to be involved in the business side of things, since they have knowledge (and also, I would argue, ethical concerns) a pure MBA wouldn't have. A lot of this comes from watching my dad (who is an MD administrator) struggle with the businessmen of his hospital who ultimately call all the shots, often to the detriment of both patients and employees for the sake of cutting costs, and thinking that if any of those people were doctors, they'd be better able to run the hospital.
But anyway, my point being, I think I want to get an MBA for career goals, which I'm passionate about, but I also think I might not enjoy the actual stuff I'll be studying as an MBA. Worth it?
 
When you’re in a position to become an administrator, your MBA will be ~20 years old. I suspect you’ll have forgotten more than you remember, especially if you’re not using it for most of that time. If you’re going rural, maybe a hotshot could rise quickly though. Do you really want to do administrative work over clinical work? If so, maybe an MD isn’t the way to go.
Hospital administrators generally wouldn’t be better if they were physicians because they’d still have to make the same hard decisions to cut costs and money losing services to keep the hospital afloat. The physicians that work there would just complain less because they couldn’t say, “If I was the President of the Board, things would be different because he doesn’t understand Medicine.”


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Il Destriero
 
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I definitely don't want to do administrative work over clinical work, so I know for sure MD is the right path for me. Administrative work coupled with clinical seems interesting is all. But you certainly make a good point about my degree aging, since I definitely wouldn't want to start out doing administrative stuff. And there are administrative offerings that an MD can engage in too, I guess, like medical director.
You also definitely make a good point about administrative stuff, too. I do think my dad's situation is a bad one (it's a medium sized rural inpatient psych center in a place where there's a real dearth of psych care, and it's making a tidy profit, not just cutting costs to keep itself afloat), but I also recognize that it's a pretty rare one (I don't hear very often of a hospital being a terribly profitable, but maybe that's because I'm just starting out in this field), and that in most hospitals, like you said, there are difficult decisions to be made, and having an MD won't really change that.
 
It's what kind of networking you can get at the MBA program you choose
Do you have an MBA?

I do. From a top 30 school... networking didn't help me land my first job out of the program, an ad did. Networking didn't help me land my 2nd job either, an ad did. Of course, this is back in the early 90's so networking really wasn't a "thing" - the degree meant everything.

What the MBA did for me was add business credentials onto an otherwise, pretty bland resume with an ARTS degree. What I did after my first couple of jobs, was what sailed my career to the stratosphere... until I told my public company to restate their financials. Crash landing. Newton's 3rd, apparently.
 
It seems like there are a few different aspects of MBAs that need to be addressed in this thread (coming from someone who has only limited experience and knowledge of MBAs, so take this as you will). I think Aldol16 has a good point that one important aspect of an MBA can be making connections. This definitely applies to those who are hoping to use their MBAs to start successful businesses or manage multi-million/billion dollar businesses. I have a few friends who have gone on to very prestigious MBA programs, then created or got on the ground floor of exciting start-ups, and then sold businesses for hefty profits. I also have friends who have used their MBAs to move up at places like Google, Facebook, etc. In some cases the prestige of the program - and the connections you make - can be very important, depending on your goals (or lackthereof).

The other option with an MBA is to learn about business administration and apply it to your current situation or to work your way up through management. This is a good option for someone who already has the connections, but needs additional training. This type of MBA will be very helpful for someone like Homeskool who is not looking to start a new business or get in at SpaceX, but instead to move into hospital/healthcare administration (or possibly be in leadership at a medical school).

The final option is to get an MBA because the position you want requires one. I keep bugging my husband to get one (he's very business oriented), but few people at his company have one - including the president, vice president, etc. And this multi-national firm is in the top 10 of the top 100 businesses to work for according to Fortune Magazine, so it's not some sleeper mom-and-pop establishment. The difference is that they provide all employees with business administration training, making an MBA unnecessary to move into management within the business.

I've considered getting an MBA with my MD. Depending on where I finally end up in July/August, it might be a good idea. But it's important to take additional costs and time into account, as well as your future goals and the time frame of those goals. It might be a better idea to hold off and do one later in life when it will fit with what you want to do.
 
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@Lawper: I'll do one, but it's gong to take some time because of the amount of research I'll have to do. I know very little about MD/MBA combined courses right now since I want even planning on an MBA when I started med school.

Take your time. It doesn't have to be strictly MD/MBA but more like the benefits of getting an MBA for students/physicians in training etc.

I'm more curious on how to treat an MBA like another fellowship after residency.

I would very much like to read it as well!
 
Do you have an MBA?

I do. From a top 30 school... networking didn't help me land my first job out of the program, an ad did. Networking didn't help me land my 2nd job either, an ad did. Of course, this is back in the early 90's so networking really wasn't a "thing" - the degree meant everything.

You should have led with that. The TSA wasn't a thing back then either and you could just waltz onto a plane. I have several friends from my undergrad college who are at the same school I am but in the business program. Which happens to be a very good business program. In today's business world, networking is key.

Like I said, I don't doubt that an MBA from any school could successfully get a job from an ad. But data is data. Grads from top programs tend to see much bigger returns on investment.
 
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In the internet age, getting jobs through replying to ads is low yield. You're in a pool of hundreds of applicants who likely all look the same, its med school admission all over again. Employers would much rather higher someone they know they get along with/will do a good job than waste time sorting through applications and then interviewing a bunch of people, same thought process behind away rotations.

Top tier MBAs let you rub shoulders with the top tiers of the business world. When you graduate and your best friend from accounting's dad is on the board of some healthcare company you're much more likely to get the job, then in 10 years when your friend is the CEO of a biotech startup you're going to get brought on as the medical director lol
 
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Top tier MBAs let you rub shoulders with the top tiers of the business world. When you graduate and your best friend from accounting's dad is on the board of some healthcare company you're much more likely to get the job, then in 10 years when your friend is the CEO of a biotech startup you're going to get brought on as the medical director lol

That last example is so true. Nowadays, the people at these top business programs are already so accomplished. I know of several who already have their own start-ups.
 
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