Soft Determinants of Quality

[Leviathanius]

What are some non-traditional criteria when judging potential MD/MBA programs? For example, would you expect the number and quality of biotech, health ins. companies, and/or pharmaceutical firms in the area to be a factor in determining what kind of educational opportunities exist? Please feel free to respond or propose other criteria besides just length of program, admissions process, and other published data.
Thanks,
Levi

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[DrBowtie]

I don't think really any of the ones you listed are important to me atleast. Most likely you will get a co-op somewhere and I don't know how much room you have to set up your own. I would say most importantly would be A)is it from a well respected business school (aka is it worth the year of lost salary) B) is it a health concentration MBA (if thats what your looking for) C)How much does it clash with the medicine program.

Those are what I think are important.

 

[Leviathanius]

Let's compare, for example, two schools: one from Boston area and one from Philadelphia. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to find comparable schools (of course, if you were at Tufts, a four year program, in Boston, the year of lost salary would be zero and cost of tuition would be the primary marginal cost). Though most of the MD/MBA programs do not require prior work experience, most do seem to have some sort of internship/preceptorship/practicum requirements where you are, in some capacity, involved in an organization. Boston's opportunity for this seem to outweigh those in Philly: Boston Scientific, Genzyme, Biogen, MGH, Brigham and Womens, etc. What does Philly have? Brystol Myers Squibb, Hahnemann Hospital, Albert Einstein Hosp., any other? Clearly, I am biased towards Boston, but why wouldn't things like these matter when deciding between comparable schools? Also, if you go on after school to complete a residency, which a vast majority of MD/MBAs do, I believe the prestige of your school's business school begins to loose luster and your experience in residency begins to take more importance, sort of a testing grounds for your management qualifications.

 

[Law2Doc]

Let's compare, for example, two schools: one from Boston area and one from Philadelphia. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to find comparable schools (of course, if you were at Tufts, a four year program, in Boston, the year of lost salary would be zero and cost of tuition would be the primary marginal cost). Though most of the MD/MBA programs do not require prior work experience, most do seem to have some sort of internship/preceptorship/practicum requirements where you are, in some capacity, involved in an organization. Boston's opportunity for this seem to outweigh those in Philly: Boston Scientific, Genzyme, Biogen, MGH, Brigham and Womens, etc. What does Philly have? Brystol Myers Squibb, Hahnemann Hospital, Albert Einstein Hosp., any other? Clearly, I am biased towards Boston, but why wouldn't things like these matter when deciding between comparable schools? Also, if you go on after school to complete a residency, which a vast majority of MD/MBAs do, I believe the prestige of your school's business school begins to loose luster and your experience in residency begins to take more importance, sort of a testing grounds for your management qualifications.

Philly has Glaxo-SmithKline (formerly SmithKline Beecham headquarters) in the city, but more importantly is but AN HOUR FROM NEW JERSEY, which is the mecca of the pharmaceutical industry (BristolMyersSquibb, J&J, Merck, Bayer, etc. -- these are all much bigger health industry employers of MBAs than anything you'd find in Boston). Also FYI Penn & Temple each have hospitals and affiliates in Philly too -- there are actually at least as many hospitals in the Philadephia area than Boston (which makes sense because it is much more densely populated).
But I have to tell you that if you plan to use your MBA in a pharmaceutical business context (meaning you are going to market yourself as primarilly a business person who also happens to know medicine, and not the other way round), the prestige of the school is going to be very important. Unlike other graduate schools, MBA program ranking is taken very seriously by employers. Because of the low program costs and lack of standardized educational requirements (no boards or bars for MBA), here are simply too many low end players in the market. So employers protect themselves by knowing which are the top 20-30 or so places and giving a credential of that tier greater weight. (There may be regional biases though -- eg. Tufts may be better regarded by Boston-based companies than its ranking dictates).

 

[Leviathanius]

Yes, thank you lawdoc, this is the sort of thing I'm wondering about. Looking beyond my Boston biases, it seems like you are saying location might be a "soft determinant of quality" secondary to the traditional ranking. I imagine pharmas are going to be interested in BOTH business types with a grasp of medicine and medicine types with a grasp of business. I'm really not as interested in working pharma, investing, or insur as I am in staying clinical/admin, but what you have is good information. Can you think of anything else that might create either regional biases as you mention or niche-based biases, than location and proximity to the industrial epicenters?

 

[DrBowtie]

After some thought, Since your interests lie mainly within the realm or med management, you should try to choose schools with good healthy hospital admin nearby so you can know the right way to do it. I.E. stay away from Drew Hospital. Possible niche biases might come from a traditional MBA (mainly finance) as opposed to a place with a Healthcare "major"