More healthcare professionals see the value of an MBA degree. These are the Top Programs for doing just that

As a pharmacist, Mahmoud Rashad got plenty of training in medication regimens and patient care, but like many clinicians, not much at all in business disciplines. When he started feeling stagnant in his career, he took what he describes as a “leap of faith” and enrolled in the MBA program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management last year.

Many people told him it wouldn’t benefit him much. But one year later, he begs to differ.

“I can confidently say that a lot about my perspective has changed and my skillset arsenal has definitely improved,” he told me in a comment on LinkedIn . “It opened different pathways to me nationally and even globally. Innovation in healthcare also is on my radar and this is where I see the weakest point.”

LinkedIn recently released our second-annual ranking of the top MBA programs to advance your career. We also looked at the industries that people worked in before pursuing their MBA and the career transitions they made afterward. (You can see the full list and methodology here .)

One thing that’s clear is that more professionals in the healthcare industry see an MBA as a way to get ahead. Nearly 4% of healthcare professionals got their MBA before their most recent job change this year, according to LinkedIn data. That’s compared to 3% in 2019, and the percentage has steadily increased every year since.

For Danny J. Avalos M.D. , who started his own medical practice in 2020, enrolling in an MBA program at the University of Miami in January has helped him understand the financial side of running a business — including new payment models that reward doctors for patient outcomes, not just the number of services performed.

“With declining reimbursements, I recognized the importance of understanding the healthcare system to maintain a viable practice,” he said in a LinkedIn comment. “Through my MBA, I realized that the fee-for-service model is unsustainable for medical practitioners and gained valuable insights into the future of healthcare professionals.”

As the healthcare industry has gotten more complex, the value of having a business degree has only increased, said Gilbert Nyaga , faculty associate of the Center for Health Policy and Healthcare Research at 美国东北大学 , one of this year’s Top MBA Programs.

Hospitals are increasingly part of larger health systems, many of which manage billions of dollars in revenue. The speed at which new technologies are being introduced also poses a tremendous challenge. Deciding how to implement — and, more to the point, afford — them is raising the stakes for healthcare providers of all sizes.

“That complexity means that if you are looking at your probability of growing as a leader in that organization, it becomes imperative to have some management skills,” Nyaga said. “It goes back to this idea of the skills that will make you more competitive as you move up the organization.”

After graduation, about 5% of Northeastern MBA graduates get their next job in the healthcare industry — a larger percentage than most of LinkedIn’s Top MBA programs. It’s also one of the two schools, along with Baruch College , seeing a notable number of career pivots from outpatient medical practice to hospitals and other healthcare providers.?

Other Top MBA programs sending more than 5% of graduates into healthcare positions include the University of Denver - Daniels College of Business , the University of Florida - Warrington College of Business , University of California, Irvine - The Paul Merage School of Business , Questrom School of Business, Boston University , the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis , the University of Rochester - Simon Business School and Vanderbilt University - Owen Graduate School of Management .

Graduates of UC Irvine’s program end up in a wide range of healthcare settings, from hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to healthtech startups and venture capital, noted Burt Alvaro Slusher , assistant dean for MBA and specialty masters programs, in an email. He pointed to the school’s strong alumni network — including ties to companies like 强生公司 and Edwards Lifesciences — as one of the advantages of the program.

For Mark Sobers, MD, MBA , who completed his MBA at UC Irvine this past June, the decision ultimately led to a job offer as a medical director for a large health insurance company. The career change came after 35 years of practicing medicine as an internist and pulmonologist, and the MBA helped get him noticed, he told me on LinkedIn.

Getting an MBA can also be helpful for clinicians who want to be on the innovation side of healthcare, particularly in places like the Silicon Valley, where clinicians see an opportunity to build new healthcare solutions. Among entrepreneurs, as many as 5.8% of company founders in the healthcare industry now have an MBA — the highest percentage since at least 2010, and up from 4.5% in 2019, according to LinkedIn data.?

“One can be a successful businessman without an MBA but the question of business savvy and credibility comes up when raising capital,” said Harish Dave , chief medical officer at AUM Biosciences and a hematologist who received an MBA from 美国纽约大学 - 斯特恩商学院 in 2006.

Vivek Narayan similarly made the move into startups after getting his MBA from College of Business - The University of Akron .?

Although that was 15 years ago, “I feel the motivations remain the same: wanting to improve the delivery of care mixed with frustrations about the system that delivers it,” he told me on LinkedIn. “These frustrations have mounted after the Covid-19 pandemic, and I suspect the situation will worsen as more private equity money buys up large hospital systems across the U.S.”

Feeling overworked and undervalued has propelled clinicians to change careers in large numbers , with the COVID-19 pandemic as the catalyst. There was also a growing realization that in order to effect change, they need a seat at the table — and to truly be heard, they need to speak the language of business.

“I believe physicians should be leading healthcare because, while you can easily get an MBA, we spend years training and on the front lines so we deeply understand healthcare delivery better than non-clinicians,” said Terry Adirim, MD, MPH, MBA , who has spent the bulk of her career as a physician executive in academia and government.?

While most leadership roles don’t necessarily require an MBA, she added, she still felt it was important to understand healthcare operations.

That theme came up over and over again in the responses I got from clinicians about why they pursued their MBA. Often, they made the decision after already taking on positions of increasing responsibility — and they wanted to better understand how to succeed in their roles.

“As a bedside nurse, there would be times that I would think to myself, ‘Who made this decision, there’s no way that they understand the needs of patient care,’” commented Shaneice Andrews BSN, MEDSURG-BC, NE-BC , who began pursuing her MBA from Grand Canyon University in 2021 after taking on nursing leadership roles. “We have amazing people at the heads of our organizations but they all speak different languages and in order to truly make a difference, we need to bridge these gaps.”?