Solving the Healthcare Shortage with a Duke Fuqua MBA

By Seb Murray Updated Jun 03, 2019

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Introduction
Duke provided MBAs a US$10,000 grant
‘Willingness of alumni to help’ top benefit of MBA, says entrepreneur
Financial rewards are not a career motivation

Solving the Healthcare Shortage with a Duke Fuqua MBA

When Anne Steptoe enrolled in medical school at Brown University on Rhode Island, she aspired to improve the wellbeing of her community.

However, she felt unconnected to the people whom she was trying to help. “I wanted to champion social justice, but had few opportunities to do so,” Steptoe says, frustrated.

So she dropped out, devised an idea for a healthcare startup, MedServe, and enrolled in an MBA at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in North Carolina to learn how to become a social entrepreneur. “The core MBA modules, such as finance and strategy, are incredibly valuable to a business founder,” she says. MedServe pairs recent medical graduates with communities to help alleviate the primary care shortage in North Carolina.

Duke provided MBAs a US$10,000 grant

Steptoe used the two-year degree to create her business plan. Duke’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) offers MBAs a US$10,000 grant to develop a social enterprise during the summer holiday, usually reserved for corporate internships.

“That paid for us to travel around North Carolina, interviewing 30 clinics about the type of human capital gaps they had,” Steptoe says. “We also interviewed college students who wanted to pursue medical careers to see how many might sign up for MedServe.”

MedServe also entered the Duke Startup Challenge, winning an additional US$12,000-15,000 of seed funding.

The money was helpful, but the biggest benefit of the MBA was the mentorship Steptoe received from Dan Heath, a Duke affiliate professor.

‘Willingness of alumni to help’ top benefit of MBA, says entrepreneur

“Dan spent six months of his personal time providing me with early feedback and guidance when the company was just an idea in my head,” says Steptoe. “That kind of investment in people with early-stage ideas is very common at Duke. What I found most useful was the willingness of alumni to help me.”

A mission to be ‘socially impactful’ is at the heart of MedServe, a nonprofit business. MedServe sells the services of each graduate to medical practices, priced at US$25,000 each year. It charges each practice US$15,000, and pays for the other US$10,000 from its own pocket, funded by philanthropic donations from foundations, corporations and local government. This enables clinics to deliver healthcare services with a lower base cost, ultimately serving more patients, “as they have an extra pair of hands”. MedServe estimates that its fellows save each practice 15 hours of paid staff time each week. They have served 30,00 patients across North Carolina overall.

Financial rewards are not a career motivation

The nonprofit also impacts the graduates, according to Steptoe, because the program may contribute to them choosing to pursue a more empathetic career path. MedServe has 19 graduates, called ‘fellows’, recruited from 55 universities across the US, with a 10% acceptance rate.

Steptoe’s goal is to become financially sustainable in North Carolina, and then expand MedServe into other states.

Like many social entrepreneurs, financial rewards are not a motivation. “I have felt the crunch of the nonprofit salary. There are more lucrative things I could be doing,” says the former senior analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But like many recent MBA grads, I want to lead a company from early to growth-stage.”

Written by

Seb Murray

Seb is a journalist and consulting editor who has developed a successful track record writing about business, education and technology for the international press.