Why should med schools teach the business of medicine?

So, here we are. Too few mission-driven and business-savvy docs in boardrooms mean patients get the kind of care they’re currently getting and at the prices we’re all currently paying. From the standpoint of doing better by patients, I hear story after story about some doc who was under the impression that, I don’t know, working with a private equity firm to do a roll-up of all the specialty practices in a local market was pretty cool and a totally victimless strategy. Or the surprisingly high number of docs prescribing drugs on that most wasteful spending list. There’s one on that list, for example, that costs taxpayers or an employer $2000 when that drug consists of basically two $15 over-the-counter meds mashed together—and yet there’s the impression that the $2000 drug is a better financial choice because there’s a co-pay card and the patient out of pocket might conceivably be less … until it isn’t, of course, because it’s not like that additional $1970 in cost suddenly becomes free.

Also mentioned in this #healthcarepodcast: Adam Brown, MD, MBA; Suhas Gondi, MD, MBA; Chad Erickson; Jeremy Granger, MD, FAAP; Eric Gallagher; Amy Scanlan, MD; Laurence Bauer; Brendan Keeler; Denver Sallee, MD, MMM; Michael R. O’Brien, MD

Click to read the full article on the RHV Web site and listen to the Relentless Health Value Podcast: