Novel Program Teaches Docs to Be Better Managers
Every other month, 20 seasoned doctors from several states and Canada travel to HSPH to learn how to be better managers. These mid-career MDs are middle to upper managers in their organizations. They have traded scrubs for desk duties and turned, not to a medical school, but to HSPH to earn a master of science degree in health care management.
"The
goal is to make physicians more competent managers," said Nancy Kane,
director of the program and lecturer in the Department of Health Policy
and Management. "Traditionally, there has been an MBA versus MD dichotomy
in health systems that doesn't seem to work well. The two groups do not
see each other's perspectives. Our idea is to merge them."
The two-year program was launched in July, 1999. Students attend a three-week concentration of classes in the summer and then return for five, four-day weekends throughout the academic year. Monthly teleconferences and weekly online assignments sustain continuity.
The doctors come from a surprising array of locations. California, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Toronto are some of the more far-flung origins. The average age of the current group is 45, said Kane. Some run public health programs; others manage departments. Many have families who remain at home while the students reside at the Inn at Harvard in Cambridge. Even locals are required to stay at the Inn, despite the added expense. The sequestration allows the students to focus on school work and on each other, said Kane.
The distance learning component adds to the program's appeal and explains the students' varied origins. Ten hours of homework are assigned each week, but students can download and upload assignments via a website and through Email. Kane expects distance learning to play a larger role in the program's future.
"The great strength of the program is its practicality," said Douglas Shenson, MD, MPH, who works in New England as executive director of Sickness Prevention Achieved through Regional Collaboration and attends the HSPH program. The material is immediately applicable to his field, he said.
The HSPH program is not unique but is unusual in that only MDs are accepted.
The program teaches doctors better communication skills, which may prove the biggest benefit to students who form the nexus between clinicians and business people.
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Lecturer Brainstormed with Officials to Aid Troubled HMO HSPH lecturer Nancy Kane has met each week of the last month with other officials to address the Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan crisis at the invitation of Attorney General Thomas Reilly. The plan is currently in state receivership. Kane and others debated options presented to them by Reilly, which included recapitalizing the HMO. The recapitalization would have required an influx of millions of dollars into the plan by investors or hospitals who attached too many strings, said Kane. She and others came up with the concept of allowing the plan to recapitalize internally, but use the statutory accounting tools available to the receiver to give the plan a solvent balance sheet. Reilly's team of financial advisors pursued that alternative and announced the plan on March 3, which will be reviewed by the state's Supreme Judicial Court. |
