We should start to offer MBAs to our medics to ensure the highest quality of NHS management

The Amanjit Jhund NHS Column

One of the criticisms that is consistently levelled at the NHS is that the management are often viewed as being a hindrance and a liability. There is often a degree of disconnect between front line staff and the management where management are viewed as being out of touch and lacking experience of patient interactions. The management staff are also often viewed as being sub-standard rejects from the private sector and vastly under-qualified in comparison to the medical staff that they manage (most hospital consultants having 7 or 8 degrees in comparison to management where 2 degrees would be an anomaly).

I’ve been asked my opinion before on LabourList as to how we can possibly look to raise the standard of management in the NHS and I believe that we should look to the practices adopted in the United States.

There was an interesting article in the Financial Times earlier this week that highlighted some of the problems inherent in healthcare management. In this sector, it said, it is necessary to have not just “business knowledge but also expertise in an industry that has specialised science, medicine and technology at its heart.”

The American approach to this particular problem is to offer joint degrees highlighted in the article by the Duke School of Medicine and Fuqua School of Business. This approach is increasingly common across the US with Universities from Harvard to Yale offering joint degree MD/MBA (medicine and management) and MD/JD (medicine and law) programs.

In our country we allow medical students to intercalate at University where they take one year out of their medical studies to gain an extra degree in a related field. Much of the time the subjects that are studied are other life sciences such as physiology, pharmacology, immunology and others.

I believe that we must start to look to offer MBAs in our medical schools as an intercalation option. By training the next generation of managers in both medicine and management we can ensure that we have a pool of well qualified managers who understand both the technical and scientific aspects of the role as well as the management principles involved. Most importantly, however, they would also have the necessary experience of providing patient care which would give them a valuable view point when making management decisions.

Encouraging more physicians to gain management degrees will not only benefit those that formally enter the management side of healthcare; many of the skills taught in an MBA from people management to leadership are equally useful and valuable in clinical practice.

As Professor Forman at Yale points out:

“It gives you a language to communicate with the people making the bigger decisions on how healthcare is delivered.”

As we move into an ever-evolving and more complex and specialised healthcare system it is extremely important that both our physicians and managers can actually understand and respect one another.