Taking Care of Business Along With Taking Care of Our Patients
As a chiropractor, I have to say that our profession didn’t get enough business education and training. Of course, most patients don’t like to think of their doctors, especially alternative doctors, as “business people,” anymore than they like to think of the “ministers” that way. And, of course, altruistically, none of us studied chiropractic medicine “for the money.” However, realistically, we can’t do what we love to do, i.e., help people to feel better, get out of pain, and get their life back again, without the money necessary to keep our office open.
Well, it looks like medical doctors are having the same issues of being business-challenged. I just read an article about physicians who are going to business school to get their MBA. Apparently, nationwide more doctors are finding it both useful and necessary to add business fundamentals to their core of medical know-how, according to health care organizations and observers.
The effort encompasses more than just learning tools for helping doctors run their offices; it is about reclaiming their voice in a sector that has become dominated by non-medical professionals, such as managed care firms, professional administrators and accountants. “Physicians nowadays need to appreciate and understand business concepts and thinking,” said Dr. James Anderson, a Cornerstone Health Care pediatrician and member of the practice’s board who is working toward a business degree. “The way we train in medicine and the way we approach problems in medicine is different than in the business world.”
The conviction that physicians can no longer be blind to the ways of business is at the center of Dr. Bill Applegate’s efforts to retool the curriculum at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Applegate, dean of the medical school, said he intends to take “a slice” of Wake’s Babcock Graduate School of Management content and implement it for the medical campus’ doctors in training. He figures it may take another two years for it to happen.
Until it becomes a staple of medical school studies, gaining business acumen is largely a voluntary effort for doctors. And by no means are most doctors adding to their already super-crowded schedules with business homework.
I believe that it is time for chiropractors, and other health care providers, to take back the business of their professions from those who are not doctors and are truly “in it” for the money. We can still maintain the “heart of a doctor,” but we also must develop the mind of a business professional.
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