Medicine and Business

With an emphasis on practical knowledge and implementation, Medicine and Business: Bridging the Gap, helps physicians make sound business and managerial decisions amid today's health care reality of unbalance, complexity, and unending change. This text is written from a business management perspective - instead of a medical practice management viewpoint - to give physicians the knowledge, vocabulary, and tools they need to work with business, finance, and managed care plan professionals with greater understanding and confidence. It is no secret that the recent corporatization of medicine has caught physicians unprepared. Once highly autonomous entrepreneurs of clinical medicine, they are now constrained by the dramatic changes in the health care financing and delivery system. The shock has worn off, and most physicians who are not on the doorstep of retirement realize that they must come to understand the vocabulary and architecture of the system in which they are forced to function. Dr. Sheldon Rovin, Professor of Health Care Systems at the Wharton School of Business and Past Director of Health Care Management Programs in Wharton Executive Education, has edited a book that introduces physicians to the basic management concepts and functions they need to survive. He and his contributors cover the essentials: systems thinking and planning, managing change and people, decision making, finance and economics, compensation and productivity, negotiation, and information systems, among other timely topics.

Sheldon Rovin, DDS, MS, is professor emeritus of Healthcare Systems at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.