A study published in 2011 examined CEOs in the top-100 best hospitals in USNWR in three key medical specialties: cancer, digestive disorders, and cardiovascular care. A simple question was asked: are hospitals ranked more highly when they are led by medically trained doctors or non-MD professional managers?  The analysis showed that hospital quality scores are approximately 25% higher in physician-run hospitals than in manager-run hospitals.  The findings of course do not prove that doctors make better leaders, though the results are surely consistent with that claim.  Other studies also find this correlation. Research by Nick Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen revealed how important good management practices are to hospital performance.  But they also found that it is the proportion of managers with a clinical degree that had the largest positive effect; in other words, the separation of clinical and managerial knowledge inside hospitals was associated with worse management.

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