The spine surgeon MBA: Is it necessary to run a good practice?

Spine

Business philosophy is important for running a spine practice, but do you need an MBA to get there?

Scott Blumenthal"Not unless you have other, more grandiose visions for the business of medicine," says Scott Blumenthal, MD, co-founder of the Center for Disc Replacement at Texas Back Institute. "For 99 percent of us, our core competency and strength is to be a caring and capable physician. If you get bored and want to do something, sure, but otherwise you hire someone with business expertise as the practice administrator. Spine surgeons don't need an MBA to run a practice."

 

Depending on the stage of your career and where your career trajectory is taking you, it may be worthwhile to go into business school.

 

"Early in your career, if you want to move out of clinical practice and into business, it's worthwhile to get an MBA," says Dwight Tyndall, MD, of the Orthopaedic Specialists of Northwest Indiana in Munster. "But it'sDwight Tyndall 2 difficult to be a full-time clinician and get an MBA and integrate that into a full-time practice."

 

Physicians advanced in their careers may also want a business degree to transition into another field and use their healthcare expertise in a non-clinical role. Options include:

 

• Practice administrator
• Healthcare system department leader
• Thought leader or consultant
• Device company executive
• Healthcare business start-up developer

 

"If you really want to become a business person, get an MBA and you can speak to the business world through your clinical background," says Dr. Tyndall. "If you want to stop being a clinician, then the MBA makes sense."

 

For those who still want to run an effective practice while being a full-time clinician, the strategy is simple: put the right team in place around you and enable success.

 

"My philosophy is straightforward: If you really focus on what you're supposed to do, you'll be successful," says Dr. Tyndall. "If you focus on being the best spine surgeon you can be, with the best technical and diagnostic skills in addition to the ability to relate to patients, then you have a better chance of being successful."

 

Knowing your market and patient-base also helps. Provide the service lines that make most sense for your patients and local insurance plans.

 

"Running a boutique practice requires different expertise and types of employees than participating in narrow networks and the Affordable Care Act patients," says Dr. Blumenthal. "You have to figure out what percentage of the budget goes to every part of the practice, keep track of physician quality metrics and optimize the accounts you have and patients you serve."

 

On the business side, identify best business practices and run a lean practice.

 

"We were able to reduce wasteful redundancies in our check-in process with electronic medical records and we streamlined it from eight to four pieces of paper," says Dr. Tyndall. "From a process point of view, we have less paper and we spend less time dealing with the paper records. That process became more cost-effective as well."

 

Maintaining good relationships with hospitals and surgery centers in the area will help build alliances that could strengthen the practice in the future. "Having a good enough relationships with your hospital or surgery center to make the patient experience from the practice to the surgery setting as seamless as possible is important," says Dr. Blumenthal.

 

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