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Three campuses, one college:
Strong partnerships and two new campuses
increase our ability to train more primary care physicians

During our planning, the college realized that one of the most
promising ways to train more students who would stay in the
state to practice—and to practice in areas where they are most
needed— having an additional campus in central Ohio. Soon after
our announcement about a new campus in central Ohio came the
opportunity to develop a campus in northeastern Ohio.

The strategy for both new campuses is to recruit, train and retain
physicians in these two vital primary care health profession shortage
areas (HPSAs), encouraging graduates to stay close to home and to
serve their communities.

“Columbus has a need for additional physicians in under-served
areas,” said Richard Vincent, M.B.A., president and CEO of the
Osteopathic Heritage Foundations. “And we felt that OU-HCOM was
in the best position to facilitate that.”

With the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation’s gift and OhioHealth
as our pre-eminent training partner, an extension campus in central
Ohio is already under way. In June of this year, OU-HCOM bought
property in Dublin, Ohio, with buildings that could quickly become
ideal spaces for medical education.

“We are excited to be working with Ohio University,” said Bruce
Vanderhoff, M.D., M.B.A., chief medical officer for OhioHealth. “This
gift from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation is going to enable us
to create a program that will, for generations, provide primary care and
other physicians for our community and for our state.”

The 14.8 acres of land just outside Columbus is in close proximity
to the college’s important training partners in the CORE, including
the Mount Carmel hospital system, Ohio State University Wexner
Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital as well as
OhioHealth facilities. The extension campus will enroll 50 additional
students beginning in the fall of 2014, with a goal of enrolling 60
students each year by 2016, all pending approval by the AOA Council
on Osteopathic College Accreditation.

“We don’t know exactly what will happen with health care reform
or what our environment will look like in the next decade,” said David
Blom, M.H.A., president and CEO of OhioHealth. “What we do know,
though, is that our community needs the highest quality health care
delivered to them in the most cost effective manner. In other words, the
best value. And we can’t do that without a strong physician network.”

In June 2012, OU-HCOM announced a second extension campus.
For the past 35 years, OU-HCOM students have trained at Cleveland
Clinic South Pointe Hospital during their third and fourth years.
Now, space at the hospital’s campus will be renovated for medical
education use, thanks to a combined investment of $13.1 million from
the Cleveland Clinic and the Brentwood Foundation. In 2015, the
campus will welcome a class of 32 students.

Of all Ohio regions, northeastern Ohio has the some of the largest
numbers of underserved populations in the state.

“Here in northeastern Ohio over the next 10 years, we anticipate
that about 25 percent of our primary care physicians will be retiring,”
said David Bronson, M.D., president of Cleveland Clinic regional
hospitals, at a reception celebrating the announcement of the pre-eminent
training partnership. “Having this pipeline to replace these doctors is
so important. It will be essential to our community hospitals and the
health of people in our community.”

According to Toby Cosgrove, M.D., Cleveland Clinic president
and CEO, “this collaboration will help improve quality for patients,
stimulate medical innovation and improve the economic health of
our communities.”

Students at both extension campuses will remain at their site for all
four years of training, with the same curricula as the Athens campus.
Training will be geared towards serving the surrounding urban
communities. OhioHealth and Cleveland Clinic have committed to
working to expand the number of AOA-approved or dual-accredited
post graduate residency and fellowship positions.

The new campuses also mean greater engagement of the health
systems’ specialists who, as clinical faculty members, will share their
knowledge and experiences with students at all three campuses.
“We are not changing our curricula by having more than one
campus—only changing how we deliver [the content],” said Lawrence
Witmer, Ph.D., professor of anatomy, Chang Ying-Chien professor of
paleontology and chair of the curriculum committee. Through video and
web-conferencing, students on the three campuses will participate
in shared faculty instructions and other learning experiences
originating from all of the sites.

The hospitals within the Centers for Osteopathic Research and
Education (CORE) become even more important in the college’s
vision, according to Kenneth Johnson, D.O., dean of OU-HCOM.
“To train more physicians, the two new sites are an important
start, and will need to grow our undergraduate and graduate medical
education programs at all of our hospital partner sites commensurately.
We’ll need more clinical rotations, residency positions and fellowships
to truly assist our hospitals to meet patient care needs they have
identified for their communities,” said Johnson.

Johnson explained that he wants to work closely with hospital
partners to develop primary care programs that directly connect
undergraduate medical education to graduate medical education at
their hospitals. “This will not only assist the college and our partners
in keeping our graduates in Ohio to practice, but also will serve as a
means to reduce the education debt of our graduates.”

New curricular experiences