by Brooke Bunch

OU-COM welcomed George Thomas, D.O., president of the American Osteopathic Association, to Irvine Hall Tuesday for an Oct. 26 lecture luncheon entitled “AOA and the Year of the Patient.”

The presentation focused on two major points — patient-centered quality care and the AOA’s strategic plan.

Thomas said education is a key component in maintaining an effective health care system, noting 65 percent of the AOA’s budget goes toward quality education and training.

Thomas has devoted his term to improving the quality of patient care. A board-certified family physician, Thomas has always focused on quality of care issues.

According to Thomas, a health-care system should be safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and patient-centered.

“Osteopathic medicine is patient-centered care,” he said. “It begins with a patient, continues with a patient, and ends with a patient.”

Thomas said there is a gap between what contemporary medical care is and what it should be.

“Your duty is to provide appropriate care for the appropriate patients at the appropriate time for the right reasons,” he told the students. “That has got to be paramount for everything you do in the future.”

Thomas noted Ohio is in a medical liability crisis. He discussed the ramifications and the hopes of professional liability insurance reform laws. By 2008, Ohio could lose more than 50 percent of its physicians due to repercussions of the medical liability crisis, Thomas said.

“We have to tackle this,” he said.

On a national level, Thomas continues to represent the AOA on the U.S. Practicing Physician Advisory Committee of Quality Assurance.

In addition to his involvement with the AOA, Thomas remains an osteopathic leader within Ohio. He became president of the Cleveland Academy of Osteopathic Medicine in 1984 and also served as president of the Ohio Osteopathic Association.

Thomas is also a current board of trustee member of the Cleveland Clinic Health System and the Ohio Society of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians.

Several years after chairing the quality assurance committee at Richmond Heights General Hospital in Richmond Heights, he became the medical director of care management and quality at Marymount Hospital in Garfield.