Demand for MD/MBAs on Wall Street?

Oh...I guess I will give a little more background:

Graduated from a mid tier private university - BA Chemistry (GPA of 3.97) and graduated from mid-tier medical school (top 25% of class). Currently in radiology residency.

The plan is to do an MBA at a top 10-15 b-school after finishing; I'll study hard for GMAT - i've taken a standardized test every year for the past 4 years, so i'm not terribly worried about it.

I was an officer in 2 medical school organizations and was responsible for planning residency fairs, bone marrow drives, and fundraising auctions. I did some basic science research during medical school. Currently, I'm involved with leadership in the statewide radiology organization, and am hoping to be chief resident (administrative position; acting as liaison between residents and administration/attendings).

Currently, I'm working on a project to form a LLC representing a group of residents contracting consulting services (during our limited free time of course) - we will be analyzing legal claims for law firms in the area with regard to distribution of cash settlements from some of the recent medical pharmaceutical settlements/lawsuits.

Yeah, I know this sounds like me advertising myself and I apologize for that; I'm just trying to get an idea of what it takes to break into wall street. What else do i need?

My friend's uncle is an MD and MBA, currently he is a managing director at a top notch boutique (Laz, GH, Ever). So there is demand, but he is in healthcare, so I don't know if he chose that by trade or got put into it because of his background. Either way, he loves it and is obviously doing well for himself.

you will obviously be asked why you want to go into finance given that you could be a well-to-do doctor...

Adcomms will also be concerned that you are a life-long academic with limited work experience and that you may have no career focus...something you will have to address in your essays

NotDa Man...

Just be a doctor, get rich, have a beautiful family, and be done with it.

Undergrad-MedSchool-and you still want more university. C'mon?

Do you have student debt? Sheesh.

healthcare groups love MD/MBAs because they think having an MD at an investment bank is actually useful.

i used to intern at a healthcare hedge fund & PE shop where every single person (even the most junior) either had an MD, MBA, PhD, JD or two of the above. pretty nasty. from what i gathered the MDs were able to understand the medicine better, especially on the PE front, but it wasn't completely incomprehensible to the others. i think MD/MBAs are more in demand at healthcare PE shops than at banks because you actually need to understand medicine if you're going to buy a start-up drug company, whereas in banking, you really don't need to know more than cash flows.

for example, i was having a conversation with one of the PE dudes (with an MD) about erythropoietins because one of the companies he was looking at developed some compound that dealt with those, but when one of the hedge fund analysts jumped in who had an MBA, we had to backtrack and explain it all to him.

feel free to PM me if you want some more info

Thanks for all the responses.

Unfortunately, the lack of business work experience will undoubtedly hurt me, but medical school and residency are so time-consuming, there is little time to do anything like that. Like I said above, me and some other residents are working as consultants to a local law firm (I don't know if that will help) but I will also have about 7 years of clinical work experience when I'm ready to apply to business school.

Could this be yet another instance of the coveted WSO hunt for prestige?

To respond to the questions...

I wasn't necessarily leaving the profession. I was just curious if there were MDs on Wall Street.

As it turned out, partway through medical school, I started taking a strong interest in the stock market (I guess greed played a role - one of my classmates {former consultant} made a big investment in TIE back in 2002, just before it ran its legendary 2000% run. needless to say, he has no medical school debt and little else to worry about). I'm a big numbers junkie, and I started following pharm companies - I made a lot of plays on what seemed likely completely irrational run-ups or sell-offs on news regarding clinical trials or progression through development phases...the number of times these stocks plummet on what is essentially non-news is ridiculous sometimes.

In medical school and residency, we learn tremendous amounts of biochemistry, pharmacology, and physiology. The research data/results publicized are much easier for us to understand compared to the layperson.

So basically - I just want to use the years of education for more than just clinical medicine.

Plus - don't get me started on the pitfalls of practicing medicine. I'm not sure if this is a case of the grass looking greener, but I feel like finance seems less risky. Ours is the only profession where, as we look to the future, demand for medical services is increasing, yet compensation is declining, and liability continues to rise.

Fun facts: *By 2015, medicare will have to start dipping into reserve funds to pay for the projected number of baby boomers that will start needing care.

*In an effort to 'stem the tide' - there are proposed cutbacks to stretch the remaining money...the first is reducing physician compensation for Medicare patients - for a grand total of 40% - that's not a typo...docs will receive 40% less for seeing Medicare patients (who make up the majority of people with serious illness) than they do now.

*Do you think liability will change? Hell no - malpractice insurance will stock cost an arm and a leg. EVERY doctor gets named in a lawsuit at least once in his lifetime - it doesn't matter if he did anything wrong or right - it happens (lawyers hope the doc will settle, even if they know the case is BS - it costs money to pay for lawyers and it costs the doctor more money to defend himself than to settle: lost income from not being able to practice because of court adds up)

*Furthermore - the absolute worst that can happen in finance is that you'll lose your job. If you are an unlucky doc and lose your case in the wrong state, you'll be homeless. Some states even come after your 401k. Now imagine after 30 years of practice, this is the end result.

I apologize for the long post; as you can tell, I have some strong feelings about the future of medicine and the misperception that doctors 'get rich.'

Do I regret going into medicine? Not at all. I enjoy helping patients and in my training, I have learned how to think critically and have learned a vast quantity of information that I will put to good use.

Do I think that the future of medicine is bleak? For doctors - you bet.

Very interesting post. A good friend of mine is aiming to go into medicine (plastic surgery), so I am definitely curious about the direction that the field is headed towards. Is your outlook more on the pessimistic side compared to others (a bear viewpoint if you will), or are they shared by most in the profession? Are there any forums like this for doctors?

As for your situation, I think that you will start out as an associate if you would get a MBA, but it will be a slightly gray area. Some banks may be reluctant due to your lack of work experience, but you may be able to overcome that by directly networking with people in healthcare groups that would make the best use of your background.

Given your strong undergrad GPA and medical school class ranking, I'm sure the GMAT will be breeze for you. If you can form a cohesive story, you may have a shot at some of the top schools. However I'm sure that actually practicing medicine for a few years would greatly help as well. Since the issues that worry you are long-term in nature, putting in some time could be easy money that would help your overall value proposition to both b-schools and banks.

Also, simply staying in the medical field while using your specialized knowledge to invest your earnings doesn't seem too bad either.

I'm still in a medical school right now, so haven't gotten quite as far as notdatman in my career. I'm in a top-tier medical school, and am planning on quitting after my MD. I've got a SA with a BB IBD and hopefully will get FT this summer. I can't begin to express how lucky and grateful I for managing to quit medicine and switch over to banking.

THe future of medicine is pretty bleak everywhere around the world that I have considered working - USA, Canada, UK, Asia etc. Just as Nodatman said, healthcare demand is increasing around the world but ironically compensation and work conditions continue to deteriorate. In the UK and other developed countries, doctors are actually the lowest-paid professionals compared to lawyers, accountants and bankers, on a years-after-qualification basis.

Even without the declining pay, doctors had to pretty much give up their youth and delay earning power until their mid-30's. We pretty much devote 100% of our waking time thinking about medicine, improving our knowledge base, and making ourselves better doctors; being a doctor is a lifestyle choice not just a career choice.

If you want to avoid going to business school, you can just take the CFA, which is three levels of tests over a three year period. After you get your CFA, you should be able to fairly easily move into a long/short health care equity hedge fund, which seems like something that you would be more interested in than banking. This route would only require study time and about 4 grand and would allow you to keep your regular job until you find a new job.

Wsosurfer, do you have any articles on this topic that I could read? As I said earlier, several good friends of mine are going into medicine and I want to make sure that they are well informed.

Also, how are careers in medical research looking? Something like a dual MD/Masters in Bioengineering path..

xqtrack, you made some good points, things that popped into my head after reading what the OP has written. There is def. a far larger "up-side" in finance than in the medical field. You seem to be somewhat of a "go-getter" so why don't you just focus on private practice, or better yet, get some of those fellow consultants you are starting that company with and start your own private practice.

You seem like you are a fairly intelligent and if you have any clue how to budget and manage your money, making 300k to 600k is very sufficient to have nearly everything you want in life, and although making 1M+ a year sounds better, the likelihood of most people making it to the senior levels of finance is very slim and the difference is probably negligible.

My ex-girlfriend is in a VERY similar situation and is thinking about getting an MBA, but I don't see much of a benefit as it stands right now. Assuming she does as well on her boards as I know she can, she will have no issues getting into a radiation oncology residency program and being that her dad is already a physician, she essentially has a job offer from a friend of the family who owns his own RADONC practice. Her potential income straight out of residency is probably a little north of 300k and will probably top out at 600k, not bad considering maybe a 50 hour work week, no after hour calls and no weekend emergencies. Probably one of the very best medical fields you can be in, similar to radiology.

Just think about all the benefits of being in the medical field and ask yourself if the perceived benefits of doing finance will ever be realized.

The medical field is going to change a lot over the next 10 years, politically. Insurance companies are going to get squeezed on margins on Medicare/Medicaid, MLRs and SG&A are significantly going to increase and you are going to see operating margins down to 1-3%. The trickle down is that doctors are going to get hosed on the revenue side and don't expect any tort reform- so yeah, don't become a doctor.

As far as finance goes, I think your best bet is to actually immediately get an MBA after your MD. There are MANY positions available for an MD/MBA from top schools in health care investing, the full chain from VC,growth equity, up to the big shops. Of course the people who typically get those positions have some combination of Harvard/Stanford MD/MBA so if you think your resume can shine at that level, would urge you to consider it. Obviously for some, specialty has already been chosen but by and large the best specialties are the more "big picture" in a business sense (cardiology, oncology, neurology, otolaryngology etc.)

Hope that helps.

Sorry about the long hiatus from the thread...recently started a new, much busier rotation...

Definitely some good questions and well-informed posting here. Basically what wsosurfer says is true - the future is bleak. Even though Congress has managed to delay Medicare cuts for physician reimbursement, it WILL be an eventuality - like I said earlier, it is the easiest legislation to pass. The long term solution (probably 10-15 years from now) is a move to a single payer system - likely the government or big insurance - where physicians will be salaried employees, at the mercy of big business/government. The hell with that - after 4 years of college, 4 years of med school, and 3-7 years of residency, would you let some manager with less education than you boss you around and tell you what you will be making?

Enough soap-boxing...What about folks from mid-tier medical schools? I am at an upper-tier radiology program, and I am hoping to go to a top level business school, but I'm afraid the med school name-brand may hurt me a little.

PS - To whoever said the MBA directly after MD; I'm under the impression that some time spent in residency may be more valuable...in medical school, you do some clinical work, but the valuable clinical experience comes during residency (especially intern year). It'll also give you some work experience to put on your resume.

I started undergrad as a ChemE... didn't enjoy engineering much so I switched to Chemistry just to finish. Worked for a top tier pharma after undergrad. Switched to financial services. I interned at one of the major exchanges and at a BB IB during undergrad, so switch to financial services wasn't difficult. Anyways, I left financial services for graduate program as a JD/MBA. Did two summers at two national law firms. Decided to forego the JD and simply finished with MBA.

So. Having a very unique perspective and enough prior direct relevant experience in pharma/law/banking to be considered dangerous... I can tell you that a JD/MBA or a MD/MBA doesn't have as much prestige or give you as much leverage as one would think for IB/PE/HF.

Also, I have absolutely NO idea why a law firm would hire radiologists to "be analyzing legal claims for law firms in the area with regard to distribution of cash settlements from some of the recent medical pharmaceutical settlements/lawsuits"?

Law firms typically hire litigation consulting folks. Why would a small/large law firm hire radiologists in training? Simply sounds bizarre to me.

I could be naive. Has happened before.

To aadpepsi: The analysis of legal claims has nothing to do with radiology whatsoever...but I am still an MD who can quickly recognize medical conditions/disease or knows what information is needed to put together a clinical picture. The compensation from these suits is based on risk factors prior to the event that alter patient's amount of claim to the settlement.

For instance: Patient A is a diabetic smoker who had a heart attack while on Drug A. Q's to be answered:

How controlled was his diabetes? ---Check hgbA1c.

How controlled was his BP? ---check for meds, and bp throughout the stay...check also bp from last primary care md visit before hospitalization.

Did he have a hx of coronary artery disease? ---check prior medical records for Cardiac cath results and what they mean.

etc.

Simply being familiar with where to look for information and what questions to ask puts us at a big advantage when evaluating these records. We would also know what and whome to request additional information from. Plus, law firms can advertise they have MD's on staff to evaluate claims. Before we came along, they were using regular secretaries/nurses who took about 4-5x as long as we did, and were inefficient with regard to where to request information from.

We (as radiologists in training) fell into this simply because we have the most free time.

Based on your comments, you should the scrap business idea and just get into a law program somewhere.

I don't mean to sound rude, but I wonder why someone like you got into MED in the first place? What has changed for you between now and then? Did you lose the lustre of helping people, or was that not the motivation of getting into the profession at all. Was it money? Was it prestige?

I know you're just prodding about MD relevance in IB/BB, but at the same time I'd answer all those questions above about myself and where I want to be. After a 7 yr-long session of busting ass, going another direction just because of liability issues or because you're affraid of working hard doesn't add up for me. To me, any MD with an MBA is best suited to run a hospital from the top down.

Numbers are great and all, but they don't really give any satisfaction to most doctors. Just as helping people doesn't give most satisfaction to anyone on WS.

Just my perspective.

this is one of the more interesting threads on this entire website, though.

Just felt like bumping this, especially in light of how much has changed since the initial post.

I feel sorry for all/any of you who have lost your jobs, or sit in fear of that happening at any time. It has definitely put another perspective on the way I look at things...I have no fear of job loss. Sure, as per the earlier discussion, the potential upside is nowhere near what it is (was?) on wall street, but it has never once crossed my mind that I wouldn't have a job, and I have been thankful for that.

But - having said that, some hospitals have closed down, and some institutes have shrank their residency spots and fellowship spots. Government funding is starting to dry up, especially in California. It's surprising watching this all play out; I initially didn't think healthcare would be affected all that much.

Decided which direction you plan to go in?

Based on your discussion of the market and the fact that you'll likely be 35(?) by the time you get your MBA, it seems to me that you might be more suited for s+t. Your concern about the long term future of healthcare seems to me valid, and I share it, but I think you should recognize that the fields covering healthcare you are considering in the financial industry are by necessity closely correlated with the same risk factors. I mean, if healthcare is nationalized, I doubt a healthcare PE firm would be unaffected. I understand that this basically seems like a waste of 7 years and an MD, and it may well be, but it seems reading over these posts that medicine is not where you want to be, and I imagine trading would give you more free time to do volunteer work, and more of the independence you seem to enjoy.

Of course, if you want to flip the risk equation, you could get a JD and begin chasing ambulances ;)

As an MD/MBA myself, I'm currently going through the same decision making process, albeit 4 years after your original post. If you're still interested, the MD MBA Association has some interesting info/forums to find out more information on opportunities www.mdmbas.com

No demand at all.

What kind of shady law firm would hire a radiology resident for clinical care advice? I hope you are just the administrator and not the actual consultant. Also, radiology boards is no joke, and after you have studied and hopefully passed, why would you go to b-school when you can finally earn that radiology attending money? If you wanted to switch you should have before residency started.