Journeys from Bayes: The need to advance business practice is already benefiting healthcare patients

A deep understanding of patient and organisational needs through formalised learning is fundamental for providing better levels of service in private healthcare.

This is the opinion of Dr Niaz Khan, Chief Clinical Officer at HCA Healthcare UK. Dr Khan has worked at HCA – a private healthcare company based in the City – since 2012, in roles including General Practitioner and Primary Care Lead, following an eight-year career in the NHS.

Due to the demands of his current position, Dr Khan now has a more commercially facing role as well as a focus on delivering best practices in healthcare and leading on management decisions. And while he had developed valuable knowledge on the job, a gap remained in his learning which his employer was keen to help him fill.

“My previous job was predominantly clinical and involved leading on some management issues, but that responsibility had significantly increased after becoming the organisation’s CCO,” said Dr Khan, who cited having a grounding in formal business disciplines as a key reason for his decision to study an Executive MBA at Bayes Business School. “I needed a deeper understanding of best practices in business to complement my clinical knowledge, which could also help me with my career development and evolve my role.

“I was given the opportunity in 2019 to do an EMBA and it made sense at that point in my career. My role requires me to manage a large team of doctors and therefore concepts such as organisational psychology and HRM principles were important for me to understand and master. Previously it had felt like sometimes I was driving slightly blind and being too reactive with management issues.”

As the leader of the organisation’s Clinical Innovations Board, Dr Khan’s role now includes reviewing innovations from both within and outside of the company, including start-ups, to assess their viability for integration into HCA’s health care service offering.

“I wanted to know how we might create synergy through strategic partnerships with other companies, and better learn how their products and services aligned with our own. I also wanted to understand how to assess the value creation potential of these partnerships, from the perspective of the patients and organisations we serve. Recently, we initiated a partnership with a private pharmacy courier service, whose scalable business model and vision of the future made me realise the benefits of our working together. I am very sure my learnings from the MBA had fundamentally helped me on this journey.”

Dr Khan was offered the chance to study at Bayes Business School in 2019. More than two years later he is preparing to celebrate his graduation next month (July).

Dr Khan worked closely with Dr John Forth, Senior Lecturer in HR Management, as well as Professors Roy Batchelor and Stephen Thomas, during his studies. He is already applying his newly acquired skills in a range of areas including finance, corporate strategy and operations management to support the health care provision services he manages.

“My experience at Bayes was really positive and I have made a great number of friends along the way. For me, everything on the course was so new and therefore my learning curve was really quite steep. The EMBA taught me a different way of looking at the world as well as allowing me to learn a range of new skills and knowledge. I also had the chance to focus on a strategic HRM topic for my Business Mastery Project, which has been impactful in our workplace. Also, prior to my studies, making sense of financial statements meant ‘Oh god!’- How things have changed now!”

“Overall, it was a very challenging experience, not least due to the difficulties brought on by the pandemic. The funny thing is before I applied to the EMBA, it had been pitched to me by a recruiter as a ‘mini-MBA’, which I thought would be easy!  I realised very soon afterwards the course was so much tougher than that! When combined with a busy job, at times the EMBA really pushed me, but I must say it has been very rewarding and a lot of fun. Now that I look back, it feels a bit strange to think when I started the course in 2019, my children were only babies – I can’t believe they are now three and five years old and will be coming to see me graduate in July! The time has truly flown by.”

Professor Stefan Haefliger, Course Director of the Executive MBA at Bayes Business School said: “Our Executive MBA program speaks to students who are experts in their domains, true specialists with impressive achievements in their industries.

“Our balanced and globally minded curriculum helps them articulate and address their challenges from multiple business angles and navigate what is both art and science: solving truly complex business issues.”

To find out more about the Executive MBA at Bayes Business School visit the website.

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