Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay: MBA-Educated Healthcare Providers

MBA-Educated Healthcare Providers
Student Name
College/University Affiliation
MBA-Educated Healthcare Providers
The U.S. healthcare system is one of the world's most complex systems (How we can expect the healthcare industry to change in the future, 2020). Unsurprisingly, changes in the U.S. healthcare system do not "show" immediately or, for that matter, simultaneously. Instead, changes are cumulative – unless groundbreaking legislation (e.g., 2010 Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act) and/or technology (e.g., wearable biometric devices) is introduced. That in mind, any given set of changes in the current U.S. healthcare system are expected or not. Following a linear logic of prediction, some current patterns, or trends, are expected to grow in scope and impact in upcoming years. For current purposes, MBA-educated healthcare providers, particularly physicians, is of central interest. Specifically, a growing pool of healthcare providers is shown in a large-scale analysis of Harvard Business School's physician graduates to pursue MBA qualifications, a pattern suggested to "result in more private practices and healthcare administrators" ("How we can expect the healthcare industry to change in the future"). To understand such a pattern, a closer discussion of what more MBA-educated physicians might mean for the quality of care and, more generally, the U.S. healthcare system.
In more recent years, important structural changes in the U.S. healthcare system have been developing. If anything, a combination of a shift to patient-oriented care, more investment in telehealthcare, more progressive regulations and legislation, growing public awareness, and more accountability of healthcare providers is making more competent, optimized, and cost-effective care a mandate, not an option. In response, conventional care management roles and responsibilities are shifting away from a clinic- to a care management-oriented perspective. That is, instead of treatment and care services expected for patients, important as are, healthcare providers are also expected to have or gain more management and business knowledge and skills in order to properly manage care in a U.S. healthcare system evolving into a more business-oriented (and cost-...