Is there a place for MBAs in EMS management?

[BEorP]

I was looking through an issue of Canadian Emergency News the other day (yes, I'm sorry I bothered) and they had an article about a hospital move that they did in Peel Region. What I noticed is that the person who wrote the article is the Manager of Planning and Performance and she had an MBA.

Now to my questions:

- Is there really a place for MBAs in EMS management? (both Canada and US) It seems that the majority of EMS managers now are just medics who have moved up the ranks but have no formal management training. Would the MBA's education help them to be a good manager for the EMS service?

- Could the pay for an EMS manager even come close to the salary of an MBA who goes into the business world?

- Does anyone have any experience working for managers with MBAs enough to comment on whether formal business training helps?

[paramedicmike]

I think the question should be if there is a place in EMS management for those *without* an MBA or some other formalized business education.

Your observation about current EMS managers if accurate. This is part of the reason EMS is still in the position it's in.

The solution to the biggest problems in EMS is education. From basics to medics to managers. Increase the educational requirements and you'll see an increase in the standing, efficiency and respect help by the industry.

Not to mention people will start taking us seriously, too!

-be safe

[Amhet1]

Do we send floor nurses out on trauma calls?

Do we make our medics rebuild engines on our helicopters?

Then why do we take experienced field people and promote them to run our services without the necessary education?

What do we know about budgets and balance sheets?

There are things that we can gain knowledge in but there is no way to develop true expertise. You see it nursing and many other fields every day. Yes a nurse is a nurse, but there are many specialties they may go into to include advanced practitioners and management. The difference is that they will go back to school to learn the skills necessary for the job. These are all steps in a nursing career ladder. You typically wont see a nurse become a CFO because its a different career ladder.

What does this have to do with EMS, you say?

Where is the career ladder in EMS? Our basic career ladder is Basic, Intermediate, Advanced (in some places), and Paramedic. There are lateral moves from Paramedic to Flight Medic, etc, and possibly upward to supervision and management type positions. There are many schools that provide a general "supervisor" class or classes, but very few formal educational opportunities to a BS or MS level that are specific to EMS. There are experts in other fields that would be a major asset to EMS in general and individual departments more specifically. Its easier to train a willing MBA to be an EMT to develop a "feel" for the job than to expect a paramedic to leave field to learn management.

This is just one of many problems that face EMS in the US today. There is too much fragmentation and too many groups trying to work towards their own political goal. The USFA has its idea of what EMS should be and not be. NAEMSE knows what and how they want to teach. NEMSMA is working on a variety of programs to improve and enhance EMS. NHTSA is probably working on the most important step in EMS development since EMS "became EMS" with the NEMSIS project. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that WE have to decide what we want EMS to be. WE need to decide the education standards. WE need to push for Bachelors and Masters programs to develop tomorrows leaders. For 30 years, we have had practices handed down from managers to supervisors to field personnel and through trial and error we have quality programs, treatment and dispatching protocols, training standards, and core competencies. Some of these things were handed to us and some we developed thru our own need.

And some has been forced upon us. One of the best examples is the "8:59" standard for ALS. The AHA had one line in some report back in the '80s and everyone with a political agenda jumped on that as being the gold standard. It has never been a standard and will never be a standard. The standard is what the community decides is the standard.

I guess the bottom line is that there is a place for many things in EMS that we dont take advantage of. Skill sets outside of EMS will be an asset to EMS if we use them and develop them correctly. But we must also develop programs within EMS that will be an asset to us.

(Looking back, it looks like just said about the same thing Mike did, but far more verbosely and a bit more personal opinion)

[Dustdevil]

Plus 5 for getting it.

Welcome to the forum! :thumbright:

[Amhet1]

Thanks bro. I realize I got a lil verbose, and headed off on a few tangents, but I think I got my point across. The hardest part was trying to NOT point fingers at any certain organizations.... =)

[DwayneEMTP]

Holy crap Amhet1! I should get CEUs for reading that!

That was first rate, thanks for taking the time to post it.

Welcome!

Dwayne

[Dustdevil]

Yeah, I get the distinct impression that paramedic school is not his only academic achievement.

[JPINFV]

Yeah, I get the distinct impression that paramedic school is not his only academic achievement.

Paragraphs. Definitely the paragraphs. Half the time a new person posts something that long they forget that their keyboard has an enter key.

[Amhet1]

Thank ya'll for the compliments, but Im just a plain ole Basic with 30 years of experience. 7 years of volunteer back home, 3 years private and hospital based, 20 years Air Force and the last 5 running a stress computer. Being out of the field for the last 5 years has given me time to do some research and play with numbers. Its also given me time to see the forest and not just the trees (how bout that for a cliche?).

Im leaving FL in a month or so for Denver. Right now Im kinda torn between finding another nice cushy Hospital job, an admin support job in EMS, or actually working in the field again. Id love to get a job crunchin numbers at Pridemark, but they use Zoll (the old Pinpoint) so they have enough software to crunch their own numbers.

[BEorP]

It's nice to see some good comments. Has anyone actually worked in EMS under a manager with an MBA? I'm doubtful that the salary would be high enough compared to what they could make in the business world to attract them to EMS. It seems like it would in some ways parallel why the education standards in the US don't seem to be rising: there is no reason to pay people more unless they have more education, but there is little reason to get more education if you won't get paid for it. The same may go for EMS managers, if they wouldn't get paid what they are worth with their business degree (MBA or otherwise) then that would explain why the vast majority of EMS managers are just road medics who worked their way up.