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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
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| Jordan Paul Amadio said that he considers the Harvard M.B.A. to be a degree in leadership. (Staff photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office) |
Joint degree program mixes business and healing
Merging medical and managerial skills
Harvard News Office
Producing leaders in health care is the goal of a new M.D./M.B.A. track offered jointly by Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Harvard Business School (HBS). Richard Bohmer, a physician and associate professor of business administration at HBS, described the need for the program: "A generation or two ago, [medical school] was all about training excellent practitioners," Bohmer said. "But now the excellence of the individual is a necessary but not entirely sufficient condition for good quality care. Health care delivery is as much about teams and highly functioning organizations as it is about excellent individuals. I see the new joint M.D./M.B.A. program as an attempt to begin training a group of practitioners who understand how to design, manage, and lead organizations as well as being able to manage patient's individual health problems."
The program is directed by Stanley Finkelstein, senior lecturer in the Department of Health Care Policy at HMS. Finkelstein points to Peter Slavin, president of Massachusetts General Hospital, who holds both M.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard, as an example of the type of individual the program aims to produce.
There have always been motivated individuals who earned the two degrees sequentially, Finkelstein explains. "These people have gone on to work in managing health services. They are hospital CEOs, they are people who are consulting, and they are people who are senior medical staff in biopharmaceutical companies." What makes the five-year integrated program different - and better - is not only that it shaves a year off the process, but its managerial and leadership components are integrated throughout the program.
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| Stanley Finkelstein, senior lecturer in the Department of Health Care Policy at the Medical School, is the director of a new M.D./M.B.A. track offered jointly by HMS and the Business School. (Staff photo Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office) |
The first three years of the program resemble the training of "regular" HMS students, but with key differences. Students in this M.D./M.B.A. track are required to undertake a management internship in the summer following their first and second years. In addition, they have required courses in health care policy and health care management. The fourth year is spent at HBS, where they will complete the requirements of the first-year M.B.A. core curriculum. In the fifth year, they will take electives at both HMS and HBS. "The goal is that during the entire five years of this program," said Finkelstein, "the students will be gaining insights into the medical as well as the managerial component disciplines. And there will be a number of opportunities for them to deal with both the medical and the managerial in the same class offering."
The program, which enrolled its first students this year, traces its origin back nearly 20 years. Ron Arky, the Charles S. Davidson Distinguished Professor of Medicine at HMS, said, "it became apparent as long ago as the late 1980s that the business aspects of medicine were of interest to more and more of our students." By the early 1990s, Arky was mentoring a student initiative to develop a course in health care management. He invited Slavin and Finkelstein to teach the course and since 1995, said Finkelstein, "that has been the only course listed in the HMS catalog directly on the topic of health care management."
Over the past 15 years, periodic attempts have been made to establish a joint program, before finally achieving fruition last year.
Seven students are currently enrolled in the program, including four admitted from last year's first-year medical school class, and three who applied concurrently to HMS and HBS. Their career interests range from managing various aspects of health services to entrepreneurial desires to start their own businesses or develop medical products. One of the students, David Lee, who would like to manage a hospital or medical school, said, "I knew that the skills acquired in medical school and business school would be invaluable for a future in hospital, health care, and medical school administration."
Another student, Jordan Paul Amadio, said that he considers the Harvard M.B.A. to be a degree in leadership, and that the program was attractive because "it's an unparalleled opportunity to obtain formal training in leadership, a skill set applicable in every kind of activity."
Amadio continued, "Progress today relies on transferring medical advances to the market. Medicine and the private sector are becoming increasingly intertwined. In order to productively navigate these issues, young physicians need broader training. In a world where issues of organization and policy so often intersect with those of science and medicine, leaders need the most diverse background possible."
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