“The MBA doesn’t get you a job,” Dr. Guthrie says. “People are looking at what you can do and what you’ve done and not at how smart and schooled you are. It’s helpful. It’s useful. I believe that the current terminology is ‘preferred ‘ or ‘encouraged,’ but it isn’t essential.”
Due Diligence
Robert Zipper, MD, MMM, SFHM, chief medical officer of Sound Physicians’ West Region and chair of SHM’s Leadership Committee, earned his business degree at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. He says it’s important that hospitalists have experience before pursuing the degree. This will help them “see the business side through a clinician’s eyes first.”
“There were some people in my cohort at Carnegie Mellon who didn’t have enough experience to make the programmatic elements all that relevant to their practice, to their world,” he says. “You want to be able to reflect on the mistakes that you’ve made and the things that you’ve done really well and have a deeper understanding of what worked and what didn’t if you want to get the most out of it.”
That said, he acknowledges that those circumstances apparently aren’t a requirement for success—one of his Carnegie Mellon classmates is a CEO.
Which kind of degree to pursue is a whole other question. Experts say that while getting the degree will give you a leg up to some extent, certain degrees will be preferable over others depending on what you want to do. For someone who wants to run a start-up medical company, an MBA might be best. For someone who wants to work in quality improvement, the MMM might be best.
An online degree—or at least one that’s completed partially online—might be more practical for a doctor who wants to continue with practice. Some programs require students to be on campus for every class, and some require occasional on-campus work, while others never require a doctor to set foot on a campus.
“The issue becomes, what are the individual’s degrees of freedom?” Dr. Guthrie says. “Individuals’ personal circumstances really drive which kind of program they look at. And then where they’re located may have a lot to do with what they choose.”
Rebekah Apple, MA, senior manager of physician services and support at the ACPE and the primary career counselor there, says that when doctors ask her about getting an advanced management degree, she starts by asking them what they want to be doing in three to five years. If the answer is not realistic, she helps them revise those goals. Once that’s settled, she helps them figure out whether the degree makes sense.
From that point, she says, there is no hard-and-fast rule.
“It’s very driven by the individual,” she says.
Plunging into management training probably isn’t best suited for those fresh out of residency with little leadership exposure at their institution or for those only a few years from retirement.
She tries to open physicians’ eyes to the wide range of C-suite positions available, including some they might not have heard of. Chief medical officer is traditionally what doctors think of when they consider executive positions, but other positions, such as chief information technology officer or chief patient experience officer, should be considered.
“The conversations are changing very much,” Apple says. “There are a lot of other emerging roles. I think sometimes that the varied opportunities that exist, whether or not people know about them at the beginning of our conversation, can really color the decisions that people make later.”
A love of learning should be a main motivator. Dr. Guthrie emphasizes the importance of pursuing a degree that you’re interested in. Without that interest, he says, a hospitalist might want to reconsider.