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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.
News for the week of Nov. 1 – Nov. 6
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