<p>Is there a high-paying career that is a combination of business and medicine?</p>
<p>Hospital administrator. (Doesn’t require a MD.) Dean of a medical school. (Does require a MD.)</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>Being a hospital administrator doesn’t require an MD, but you can be more competitive if you do have an MD depending on the medical center and it’s focus. Being the dean of a medical school is kind of a mixed academic-business job, and you typically have to have some kind of research career behind you and some years spent as a member of the faculty at a medical college. So unless you’re interested in teaching and doing research for ~15 years prior to that, that may not be a realistic goal.</p>
<p>Many MDs own their own practice, so that in and of itself is a business career. Hospitals also hire heads of clinical practice - so there’s a head nurse, a head physician, etc. Many head physicians are not only great practitioners but also have MBAs and some training in business; they manage the other physicians and make sure the hospital is meeting national standards.</p>
<p>There’s then the insurance industry. Many health insurers hire doctors to serve on their boards and help them make decisions about what’s medically necessary for different kinds of ailments.</p>
<p>There’s also healthcare consulting. A lot of consulting firms hire MDs (sometimes directly after their residency) to do healthcare consulting or even just general consulting. That includes the big everything firms like BCG, McKinsey and Accenture as well as the smaller boutique firms that only focus on healthcare.</p>