Like many physicians, Michael Ebright, MD, MBA’24, followed the arrow-straight path to his career through undergrad, medical school, a decade of post-graduate training, and the first clinical role. What many physicians do not gain during those years is an understanding of the business of medicine.
When Dr. Ebright, who is chief of thoracic surgery at Stamford Health in Connecticut, was asked to sit on the system board, he knew he needed more training.
“I knew how to operate on people, but I didn’t know anything about what’s happening in the back offices,” said Dr. Ebright said. “After a couple years of gaining deeper exposure to the business of healthcare while on the board, I became very interested in how it all works, and I realized I was only scratching the surface. I wanted to learn more so I could take it apart and see how it works.”
It’s the business lingo, the communications, and the wider view of healthcare that physicians sometimes feel they lack when they climb the ladder of hospital leadership.
Dr. Ebright enjoyed his time on the board and wanted to gain more business training. He created a spreadsheet of all the MBA options located both near and far. He ultimately chose the Physician MBA Program at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Indianapolis for its focus on physicians and its mix of in-person and online learning modalities.
“It was a difficult decision because I’m the only thoracic surgeon at Stamford,” Dr. Ebright explained. “But I really liked Kelley because it’s a top-ranked business school with an MBA exclusively for physicians. I didn’t want a fully online program because you can’t replace the in-person collaboration and companionship that helps you learn the soft skills you need. The quarterly in-person weekends, the flexibility to do the rest of the work online, and a travel schedule compatible for an active surgeon made Kelley the MBA program for me. Although I worked most waking hours, I was able to complete the MBA without sacrificing my clinical productivity.”
Dr. Ebright found that his travel from the New York metropolitan area to Indianapolis actually bolstered his productivity. He used all the airport time for reading, and staying at a hotel minimized distractions from work and home.
“The IU Indianapolis campus is a short jaunt from the airport,” Dr. Ebright said. “In fact, my group of new business school friends and I found time to unwind at the famous St. Elmo’s Steakhouse on the Thursday night of every in-person residency.”
The Physician MBA curriculum is designed specifically for physician leaders who want to create effective change in their organizations. Each course blends traditional business principles with a healthcare focus, so physicians can immediately begin applying lessons in negotiations, accounting for decision-making, and data analysis to make positive changes in their practices or healthcare systems.
Dr. Ebright was able to better navigate conflict and deploy process improvement techniques to improve efficiency in his practice. His team was able to cut same-day cancellations by 75% by creating a mandatory preoperative evaluation clinic.
“We started a multidisciplinary lung nodule clinic to treat or follow incidental findings in a standardized, evidence-based fashion, thereby increasing quality of care and resource utilization. We have a greater chance at detecting cancer at a stage when it’s still curable,” Dr. Ebright explains. “We developed the operational mechanism to get the clinic up and running by combining my work in operations and healthcare IT from the Kelley School.”
The Physician MBA Program was created with the goal of equipping physicians with the tools, confidence, and business acumen to lead in healthcare. Physicians like Dr. Ebright share the Kelley School’s philosophy that doctors with business training will be the most effective change agents because they have the dual perspective of clinical care and administration.
“I believe you need to have boots-on-the-ground experience to be able to understand the critical questions in healthcare. You need physicians to be the voice of change, and we need to be effective liaisons between patients and the business of healthcare,” Dr. Ebright said. “The Kelley Physician MBA really allows us to be much better liaisons between physicians and the executive suite because it teaches us to speak the language. We understand what makes things tick, what works and doesn’t work, and how to fix what’s broken.”
A common source of physician frustration lies in securing funding for equipment, services, and staffing they need to treat patients. Why administration chooses to fund—or not to fund—these requests is often at the heart of the tension between the clinical and administrative sides of healthcare. Dr. Ebright says the Physician MBA Program helps doctors gain the financial and holistic view of the entire health system that influences these decisions.
“When you can see the whole system, you have a greater awareness of how all the gears are turning around you. Doctors must have a greater understanding of why decisions are being made as they are,” Dr. Ebright said. “It’s also important to identify which decisions might be flawed or based on misunderstandings of managers who are simply not experts in medicine. You end up becoming a more trusted voice because you understand both sides of the coin.”
Dr. Ebright was recently promoted to chief of surgery. He says the MBA fueled his desire for further leadership opportunities, and it also bolstered the confidence of his health system in his ability to serve.
“The Kelley education changes the way the physician is perceived. When I walk into the room now, executives see a doctor who can speak their language. That gives you a firm seat at the table.”
The Physician MBA also helps physicians evolve as leaders through coursework, personal assessments, and on-on-one leadership coaching. While doctors are natural captains of the ship in healthcare, that doesn’t always translate effectively to decisions made outside of the exam or operating room. As a surgeon, Dr. Ebright is quite comfortable giving orders, recommending treatments, and directing teams in complex procedures, but he says the training at the Kelley School has made him a more sophisticated leader.
“The Physician MBA curriculum really helped me code switch from the operating room—where I need to control all the variables and make decisions unilaterally— to being in front of patients in clinic—where I have to be reassuring, supportive, and confidence inspiring—to the executive suite—where I need to be a proactive leader and gain consensus,” he said. “Every leader needs to acquire the hard skills, like economics, accounting, and operations, to be successful. But it’s the soft skills we didn’t learn in medical school that drive success: being able to lead through conflict and difficult times, to inspire people, and to reach consensus. These are the skills that elevate us from good to great.”
Most alumni of the Physician MBA Program say an unexpected takeaway from the Kelley School experience is the network they gain with fellow physicians. Dr. Ebright says his cohort stays in touch every day, discussing shared challenges and offering advice.
“I was negotiating this new position at around the same time one of my Kelley friends was doing the same thing. My discussions with cardiologist John Erwin, chief of medicine at Prisma Health in South Carolina, proved invaluable as we bounced ideas off of each other over the past few months.”
Physicians also form tight-knit relationships because they travel together and explore parts of their field they had not previously encountered. For instance, cohorts travel to Washington, D.C. in year two of the program for the Healthcare Policy Experience course. They may also travel abroad to study a healthcare destination through the Global Healthcare Experience. Dr. Ebright traveled to London, Paris, Seoul, and Tokyo during the program.
“Traveling with your professors to evaluate healthcare systems in other parts of the world and learning together was an incredible and immersive experience,” Dr. Ebright said. “There’s no better way to truly comprehend U.S. healthcare than by highlighting the stark differences between national systems. You realize that there’s no perfect system, and you discover where the real opportunities lie.”
From his career advancement to his clinical practice and to his daily life trying to better understand the world around him, Dr. Ebright says earning the Physician MBA was transformative.
“This was one of the best decisions I have ever made,” he said. “It was extremely impactful for me, for my career, and beyond. It changed the way I look at the world.”
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