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Physician, Hone Thy Business Skills
Yale, UNH programs help doctors be
better business people, too
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Business New Haven
5/3/1999
By: BNH
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It isn't easy being a doctor these days.
Forget surgery, malpractice, technology, life and death - all that E.R. stuff. It's the business of medicine that's driving many M.D.s to distraction these days.
To address the increasing complexity of the health care biz, two area universities have begun special programs designed to help physicians better manage the financial and administrative sides their professions.
April 15 saw 21 doctors become the inaugural graduating class of the Yale Management Program for Physicians, newly developed by doctors in the faculty practice at the Yale School of Medicine, in conjunction with faculty at Yale's schools of management and epidemiology and public health.
“The traditional medical school curriculum does not give doctors the management and leadership skills they need to play an active role in the evolution of health care, says program director Stephen Rimar. “More doctors are seeking management training, but most programs are designed for health-care executives.
“Our program addresses the needs of the front-line managers of health-care delivery - the physicians who lead and manage medical practices,” says Rimar.
The Yale program is geared toward physicians who manage groups of three to 20 doctors and attending staff. Members of the first graduating class learned how health care is organized, delivered and financed. With the help of a graduate management student, they also developed business plans for their own practice groups.
Over at the University of New Haven, a ten-week pilot program called “Business Basics for the Practicing OB-GYN” is helping teach obstetricians and gynecologists the business skills needed to run successful practices.
Co-sponsored by the UNH School of Business and the Connecticut section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the program, which runs through June, is teaching participants such topics as accounting, finance, decision-making, marketing and strategic planning.
According to program director Mark S. DeFrancesco, in the increasingly corporate world of medicine, physicians are regularly faced with complex business decisions many are ill-equipped to make. “It is survival these days,” he says.
UNH and ACOG hope to make the course offering and annual event, and DeFrancesco says he hopes it may spawn the creation of similar programs across the country.
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