The University of Alabama at Birmingham has announced plans to launch a new dual-degree program that combines a Doctor of Medicine degree (MD) with an MBA.
The new program will help medical students better understand the business side of healthcare, through courses in accounting and finance, economics, marketing, management, healthcare innovation, operations, and supply chain management with a focus on healthcare, as well as information technology and business strategy with a focus on healthcare.
“Changes in the healthcare field are opening more doors for physicians,” says Eric Jack, the dean of the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Collat School of Business.
“From the way healthcare is delivered, to the evolution of medical informatics, the industry is constantly transforming. Earning an MBA opens medical students up to new, innovative ways of thinking, and provides our medical school graduates with not only more career options, but also the ability to actively participate in shaping the future of healthcare.”
The program will be four years long and is designed not to interfere with the rigors of the first two years of medical school. Students will begin business classes in the summer before starting medical school, and then continue them after their second year of medical school.
Graduates of the dual-degree program will come away with an understanding of how business and medicine work together. “Medicine is often seen as a vocation, and this does not sit comfortably with business," says Majd Zayzafoon, co-director of the new program.
"However, while medicine can help a few, medicine and business combined generates growth and helps the masses. We have to always remember that practicing medicine is a career, fixing ailing bodies is a skill, and managing healthcare is a business.”
The Collat School of Business is accredited by AACSB International.
Programs are now being accepted for the program's inaugural intake, which begins in the summer of 2016.
For more information, please see the University of Alabama at Birmingham's news release announcing the launch of the MD/MBA program.
Photo: Jaymay / Creative Commons (cropped)
