WorldCity Business Magazine

(2) Extreme Makeover - interview with Barbara Kahn - Dean of UofMiami's B-School

by WC

Could the University of Miami still fondly recalled by some as sun-and mojito U soon be known instead as the worlds premier school for healthcare business education? Barbara Kahn
thinks so. Kahn, recruited a year ago as dean of the School of Business by university President Donna Shalala, is undertaking programs she believes will help propel the department into the
ranks of elite business schools.

Just as the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania is synonymous with excellence in finance and the Kellogg School at Northwestern is known for its global supremacy in marketing,
so Kahn hopes that the UM School of Business will become world leader in business of healthcare.

As part of that effort, this fall the university welcomes the first class of a joint MD-MBA degree, a collaboration between the School of Business and the Miller School of Medicine. It adds a year to the four-year medical school curriculum, guaranteeing participants an intense grind.

Kahn says that equipping doctors with expertise about the interaction of medicine and money is crucial as the nations healthcare landscape changes. There are many businesses and policy issues associated with the healthcare industry.

And just as we understand the importance of healthcare in our economy and society, there are also important business issues that come up, she said. The new program will train physicians to steer a private practice through the complexities of negotiating with insurance companies, hospitals and government programs, as well as prepare doctor executives to staff insurance companies, health policy institutes, hospitals and medical centers.

Kahn, 55, lured from the Wharton School, is overseeing a number of initiatives that bring together business expertise and other disciplines.

The school anticipates offering MBA degrees paired with both architecture and nursing. It now has a Law-MBA degree track and is already known for its healthcare administration MBA which
attracts many doctors. Kahn also wants the school to focus on other areas that play to South Floridas economic strengths, such as real estate, global entrepreneurship and weather-related risk studies. Its all part of Shalalas vision to attract top notch talent and foster innovative programs in a bid to push the school into the ranks of premier private institutions.

Shalala has a war chest to back up her efforts. Earlier this year school announced a record $1.4 billion raised over seven years. Meanwhile, Shalala recruited a number of well-known researchers and academics from top-rank schools to lead a variety of faculties. Kahn, who has a PhD in marketing from Columbia University, held a senior position at Wharton where she specialized in researching the psychology underlying consumer health are decisions such as whether to schedule a routine colonoscopy. She found emotions and stress greatly affect such decisions. Doctors, she said, must help people cope with fears and frustrations while also explaining the medical rationale for care. That means understanding that someone calling a doctors office and placed on hold for too long may just give up. To me, understanding the customer service aspect of healthcare is just as important as understanding the science, she said.

Those seeking the joint MD-MBA degree can expect to learn about customer service, as well as marketing, finance, economic theory and how healthcare systems operate in the overall economy. The focus comes as healthcare, which now accounts for about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, is expected to expand, with estimates of medical and related expenditures accounting for a whopping 20 percent of GDP by 2015.

Steven Ullmann, who directs the universitys health-management and policy programs at the School of Business, said that despite presidential candidate promises, radical change in healthcare delivery will probably not happen in the near term. Which means that tomorrows doctors would do well to understand how the system is evolving. For example, he points out, the tendency is for doctors to join large practices rather than work solo. Those practices must be run as a businesses.

To have an understanding of multimillion dollar operations, you have to have an understanding of finance, to understand the legal ramification of contracts, and understand the changes in healthcare policy, he said. You have to understand Medicare reimbursement and how it affects your ability to practice and what areas are covered and what areas arent.

Large practices want people with joint medical business degrees as do hospitals and other healthcare institutions. You are basically getting a much broader person who understands the business side of this industry, said Ullmann.

The regions healthcare community is watching the business schools efforts with interest. Penny Shaffer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Floridas president for South Florida, learned about the new joint degree program after meeting Kahn earlier this year. And, she notes, one of her companys directors is a doctor with an MBA. He understands how to speak the language of the doctor, but he understands the business sense as well, not only for a big insurance company but from the point of view of the doctors practice.

According to Shaffer, not enough people appreciate that running a streamlined office can translate into better healthcare. Every bit of efficiency a doctor can learn about the practice and how to manage it as a business is helpful, she said. And in the long term, that can bring down the cost of medical service delivery.

The healthcare industry is hungry for people whose education bridges several complex disciplines, notes Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for Americas Health Insurance Plans, a Washington, D.C. based insurance company trade group. In healthcare today, there are many jobs where folks do need a very grand outlook, she said.

You need to know how regulations affect the business, how the economy affects the business, how our American lifestyle affects the business of healthcare. And the future is likely to only bring more challenges. For example, soon all insurance customers will have a smart card that doctors office staff will swipe in a reader. The smart card will yield coverage and payment information, and decrease the need to call to verify co-payments, deductibles and so on. Doctors who appreciate the savings of such a system will likely implement it sooner.

It does require some upfront investment, Pisaro said. But someone who is viewing the practice of medicine more broadly, who has a prism they are looking through, may realize it would be an asset. Meanwhile, Kahn believes that the University of Miami is the place where medical students, researchers and others can get ahead of those kinds of health trends while giving the business school an avenue to the upper echelon.

My point of view it this: the healthcare economy is a very important piece of the global economy, Kahn said, adding that collaborations with other university disciplines while leveraging South Floridas unique opportunities will help raise the business schools profile. It allows us to take a leadership position in this space, she said. And it may even help retire, once and for all, that sunshine-and-party image. WC