Surgeons know how to operate. Aside from that, most of them couldn’t figure out how to get out of the parking lot. Seriously, we installed a new parking lot system and many of them had to be trained a few times.
Doctors make horrible administrators. Most doctors are not open to “new” ways of doing anything. While they are usually smart in clincal terms, they are not always the smartest guys in the room when it comes to how stuff should work—and they don’t like when that is evident.
That said, accountants make horrible administrators as well. There needs to be a Senior Leadership team that is focused on the success of the organization: A combination of high quality and high efficiency.
Anyone who thinks that Medicare reimbursement tables are not responsible for the way hospitals are run need to rethink their assumptions. We HAVE nationalized healthcare already—all of our insurance reimbursement rates are based on Medicare rates. EVERYTHING is managed to those rates.
Same with a manufacturing operation. Don’t want a bean counter, salesman or HR at the helm. An engineer or project manager is better than those. (From experience.)
Medicare hospital rates are set based on what it should cost an efficient hospital to provide a DRG class of service.
Why reinvent the hospital care pricing wheel(when the hospitals are not prepared to break themselves up)?
I went to college with pre-meds and I found them to be smart people.
I've worked for people with accounting degrees and hate it. The majority are very linear in their thinking. all the little boxes have to line up.
Engineers would be next.