o h i o u n i v e r s i t y c o l l e g e o f o s t e o p a t h i c m e d i c i n e

The Promise: Training Greater Numbers of Primary Care Physicians for Central Ohio and the State-at-Large

vision 2020: leading the transformation of primary care in ohio

the case for a regional eXtension campus in central ohio

THE CASE for a REGIO

NAL EXTEN

SION

CAMPUS

in CENTRAL O

HIO

The promise lives IN THE OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS OHIO’S NEED FOR GREATER NUMBERS OF PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIANS IN THE OPPORTUNITY TO ENHANCE ACCESS TO PRIMARY CARE MEDICINE FOR THE CENTRAL OHIO COMMUNITY

IN THE PROSPECT OF CREATING A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT THAT PREPARES PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIANS TO DELIVER CARE WITHIN A TRANSFORMED DELIVERY SYSTEM

IN THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF OUR ALUMNI WHO WERE RECRUITED FROM CENTRAL OHIO AND REMAIN THERE TO PRACTICE

AND IN THE GENEROSITY OF OUR FRIENDS AND PARTNERS, WHO WILL ENABLE US TO ACHIEVE ALL THAT WE COLLECTIVELY IMAGINE.

The promise lives in

Your involvement in creating a regional extension campus in Central Ohio is vital. Our years of success, growth and achievement have positioned us to help meet the health care needs of Ohio in new and important ways. Your support and investment have made possible that success. Today we have an opportunity to set in motion a transformation of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine that will be remembered as a pivotal point in our history.

our shared missions

OU-COM Trains Primary CarePhysicians for Ohio

2010 Total Number of Practicing OU-COM Graduates in Ohio and Percentage of OU-COM Graduates Practicing Primary Care in Ohio

• 1184 graduates practicing in Ohio

“The Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine has stayed true to the founding mission by emphasizing primary care and encouraging its graduates to practice in areas of need. In today’s environment, that is more important than ever.”

RIChaRd a. VInCenTPresident and CEO of the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations

DELIVERING on the PRIMARY CARE PROMISE The Ohio Revised Code gives the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine a charge like no other.

Included in the legislation signed into law by Gov. James A. Rhodes in 1975 to create the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine is a paragraph that speaks to our unique mandate—a mandate even more pressing today than it was three and a half decades ago:

“Educational programs of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine shall emphasize the training of osteopathic doctors who will engage in the family practice of medicine. The college shall encourage its graduates to practice medicine in those areas of the state where the greatest need exists for osteopathic physicians.”

That OU-COM would be located in the heart of southeast Ohio and specifically work to address the limited availability of primary medical care there and in other underserved areas was the prime argument to establish the college in a state that already boasted six medical schools, all in urban settings.

Without question, OU-COM has met—and exceeded—the expectations set forth in the legislation.

Of the college’s nearly 2,700 graduates, 60 percent have remained in Ohio. Fifty-six percent of our graduates in Ohio practice in the primary care fields of family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics, and of those physicians, 56 percent practice in communities with fewer than 50,000 residents.

Ninety percent of OU-COM’s graduates practicing primary care in Ohio completed their graduate medical education training in the state. The same is true for 95 percent of our graduates in primary care practice in central Ohio. Additionally, three-quarters of our graduates practicing primary care in central Ohio also trained in central Ohio.

A national study found that OU-COM led all Ohio medical schools in those categories and also had the highest percentage of graduates practicing in primary care Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) in the state.1 On a national level, the college is ranked 11th (tied with two others) among 159 medical schools in creating physicians who serve in rural communities.2

Today, OU-COM is prepared to embark on an ambitious new endeavor with equally important ramifications. It comes on the heels of a strategic planning process that challenged a broad spectrum of stakeholders to define the college’s best path to continued excellence and community service.

The direction during the planning process was clear: the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine possesses all the tools to become a national leader in primary care medical education. These tools—core competencies in teaching, research, collaboration, discovery, select specialties, and patient care—have been developed in parallel with the primary care promise OU-COM has fulfilled since its inception.

Several key priorities will elevate the college to national prominence in primary care medical education. One of the most critical of these priorities is the ability to graduate a greater number of physicians who will address the dramatic and growing need for primary care physicians in general, and most notably, in Ohio’s metropolitan areas. After considerable analysis, the college proposes a regional extension campus in central Ohio as the most logical solution. At the heart of that seven-county region is Franklin County, which is second only to Cuyahoga among Ohio counties with the largest number of HPSAs.

Our vision is this: Central Ohio can become a national destination for medical education, predoctoral and postgraduate. OU-COM, with its world-class health education system and supportive health care partners, will build upon current strengths in central Ohio to develop an extraordinary educational enterprise —increasing the numbers of physicians being trained, improving upon the quality of the training, drawing on the availability of quality faculty and practicing physicians, strengthening affiliations with high quality health systems, and taking advantage of the immediacy of two medical schools and their offerings. Your support is needed now more than ever before.

__________________________________1 Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care, 2007.2 Academic Medicine, journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, April 2010.

( )

%0-20%

21-40%

41-60%

61-80%

81-100%

% PracticingPrimary Care

Total numberof practicing

graduates

Percentageof total

graduates practicing

Primary Care

WilliamsFulton

(1)

Lucas63% (38)

Wood71% (7)

Hancock33% (6)

Wyandot100% (1)

Seneca100% (2)

Huron45% (11)

Erie77% (26) Lorain

73% (26)

Cuyahoga42% (125)

Medina40% (10)

Summit55% (87)

Portage47% (17)

Mahoning62% (42)

Trumbull70% (20)

Ashtabula60% (10)

Geauga56% (16)

Lake92% (13)

Sandusky38% (8)

Ottowa100% (1)

HenryDefiance67% (6)

Paulding100% (1)

Putnam (1)

Van Wert (1) Allen

30% (10)

Auglaize (1)

Hardin100% (1)

Logan33% (3)

Champaign

Union75% (8)

Marion33% (3)Mercer

40% (5)

Darke (1)

Shelby (2)

Miami75% (8)

Montgomery36% (77)

Butler71% (17)

Warren88% (16)

Hamilton55% (29)

Clermont75% (8)

Clinton100% (1)

Highland

BrownAdams Scioto

60% (15)

Pike80% (5)

Lawrence

Gallia100% (3)

Jackson100% (6)

Meigs100% (2)

Athens58% (43)Vinton

100% (1)

Hocking100% (3)

Pickaway50% (4)

Fairfield59% (17)

Franklin58% (181)

Perry100% (1)

Morgan

Washington40% (10)

Noble100% (1) Monroe

Belmont (1)

Harrison

Guernsey67% (3)

Muskingum33% (9)

Licking53% (19)

Delaware55% (11)

Morrow67% (3)

Knox50% (4)

Coshocton100% (3 )

Tuscarawas42% (12)

Holmes (1)

Crawford75% (4) Richland

20% (10)

Ashland100% (4) Wayne

69% (13)Stark

50% (64)

Carroll100% (1)

Jefferson100% (2)

Columbiana82% (11)

Ross50% (20)

Fayette

Greene65% (20)

Preble100% (1)

Clark20% (5) Madison

100% (5)

Union75% (8)

Pickaway50% (4)

Fairfield59% (17)

Franklin58% (181)

Licking53% (19)

Delaware55% (11)

Madison100% (5)

Union75% (8)

Pickaway50% (4)

Fairfield59% (17)

Franklin58% (181)

Licking53% (19)

Delaware55% (11)

Madison100% (5)

THE ESCALATING NEED for PRIMARY CARE

The need for more primary care physicians is indisputable. By all accounts, that shortage will grow exponentially under the Affordable Care Act, which calls for a strong base of primary care physicians and enhanced preventive care. Federal health care reform is expected to provide health care coverage for some 32 million uninsured Americans—including more than 1.3 million in Ohio—by 2014.3

Meanwhile, within the next decade, experts predict a national shortage of more than 91,000 physicians, including 45,000 primary care doctors. During the same period, the number of Americans older than 65—the population segment most reliant on health care services—is projected to increase by 36 percent. And although physician shortages will affect every segment of the population, the most severe impact for access to primary care medical practitioners will be on the 20 percent of Americans who live in rural or inner-city HPSAs.4 Our business plan for this proposed regional extension campus5 cites recommendations made by the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) in 2005, which called for an increase in medical school enrollment of 15 percent. This translates to 2,500 new students each year. Further, the AAMC indicated that the increased enrollment occur in areas of the country with acute physician shortages. The following year, 2006, the AAMC increased that recommendation to 30 percent and urged all member colleges nationwide to consider increasing their enrollment.6 Other studies have reached similar conclusions, including one by the Council on Graduate Medical Education. The council called for an additional 3,000 medical school graduates annually by 2015.7

Since 2006, additional medical schools are either being developed or have opened—five allopathic and seven osteopathic—in response to projected physician shortages. Even with the additional enrollment at these schools, the AAMC’s goal of increasing first-year enrollment at allopathic schools by 30 percent won’t be met until after 2020. The 30 percent goal, if it can be achieved, still would not create a large enough first-year enrollment nationwide to meet the current demand for more physicians. And it would not come close to meeting the need for physicians in 2020 and beyond.8 As the vital need for more primary care physicians grows, significantly fewer medical students are choosing generalist careers, largely because of mounting medical education debt and the relatively low earning potential of physicians practicing primary care. The average medical school graduate incurs an educational loan debt of $162,500, not including prior undergraduate or graduate education debt.9 However, because primary care physicians’ expenses typically exceed earnings in their first three to five years of practice following residency, medical students are finding little financial incentive to choose primary care over higher-paying specialties.

From 1997 to 2006, responses to a national survey indicate that the proportion of medical school graduates who chose primary care declined from 17.6 percent to 6.9 percent in family medicine, from 15.7 percent to 6.7 percent in general internal medicine, and from 10.2 percent to 6.6 percent in general pediatrics.10 By comparison, in 2009, 36 percent of OU-COM alumni were practicing family medicine, 12 percent were practicing internal medicine, and 4 percent were practicing pediatrics. Although we can’t dictate the specialty practice a medical student enters, with your support OU-COM is prepared to address the challenge to enhance access to primary medical care.

With community and stakeholder support, we can fundamentally change the primary care landscape in our state.

“We have one of the best track records among all medical schools in supplying physicians for rural areas, and the athens campus will continue to focus on that. developing an OU-COM central Ohio extension campus will help alleviate the physician shortage that exists—and will continue to grow—in urban areas.”

JaCk BROse, d.O.Dean of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine

___________________________________ 3 White House estimates. 4 Center for Workforce Studies of the American Association of Medical Colleges, 2008. 5 Tripp Umbach, “Independent Review of Ohio University’s Business Plan for the Proposed Regional Extension Campus in Columbus, Ohio. January 21, 2011. 6 Association of American Medical Colleges, AAMC Statement on Physician Workforce, June 2006, http://www.aamc.org/download/137022/data/aamc_workforce_poisition.pdf. 7 “Physician Workforce Policy Guidelines for the United States, 2000-2020” presented by the Council on Graduate Medical Education, January 2005. 8 Center for Workforce Studies of the American Association of Medical Colleges, 2008. 9 “Economic Impact of a Primary Care Career: A Harsh Reality for Medical Students and the Nation,” Academic Medicine, November 2010.10 American Association of Medical Colleges’ Graduation Questionnaire

“We are excited to be working with Ohio University as it continues to strengthen its commitment to medical education, the community, and the state. We absolutely want to help in keeping the best and brightest students and physicians here in Ohio.”

BRUCe VandeRhOff, M.d.Chief medical officer for OhioHealth

OU-COM: UNIQUELY POSITIONED to CREATE PHYSICIANS for CENTRAL OHIO

No other medical school in the state is better prepared to graduate primary care physicians for Ohio. Having long demonstrated success in training primary care physicians who remain in the state to practice, the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine has included in its strategic plan, Vision 2020: Leading the Transformation of Primary Care in Ohio, a proposal for a regional extension campus in central Ohio that would complement and enhance the Athens campus.

Among many advantages, a second OU-COM campus will:

• Leverage a wide range of central Ohio resources and partnerships to enrich the student experience and benefit Ohioans and collaborating organizations.

• Enhance the ability to attract and train students interested in practicing in urban underserved areas, particularly in central Ohio, and at the same time enhance the ability to attract and train students interested in serving rural underserved areas, particularly in southeast Ohio.

• Integrate basic, social, and clinical sciences in a four-year curriculum aimed at students who intend to practice specifically in Ohio’s underserved regions.

• Help meet the huge demand for admission to the college, which had more than 3,500 applications for 120 seats in 2010.

• Offset the limitations that OU-COM faces: finite physical, clinical, and faculty resources on the Athens campus and in southeast Ohio. The upcoming increase in class size, from 120 to 140 students for the 2011 entering class, required millions of dollars in renovations and puts critical facilities such as the gross anatomy lab and lecture halls at maximum capacity.

Establishing a regional extension campus within central Ohio’s world-class medical corridor will serve as an excellent recruiting tool for OU-COM, attracting prospective students who want to live and work in the Columbus area or commute to a centrally located campus. Central Ohio is currently the source of many applications to OU-COM, and that number will undoubtedly grow with the added option of a Columbus campus.

Based on current projections, a central Ohio campus could be operational by August 2014, when it would admit an initial class of 50 students. Excluding the required initial capital investments, the Columbus campus operating budget can become self-sustaining by academic year 2016-2017, which includes the third incoming class. By academic year 2019-2020, we expect the Columbus campus will be admitting 60 students per class.

Developing a financially sustainable model through public-private partnerships is particularly important given the expectation that state funding for medical education will continue to decline. During this process, we will work to maintain our strong relationships with Ohio’s other medical schools.

Your support for the proposed central Ohio extension campus will improve access to medical care for central Ohio communities.

WHY CENTRAL OHIO? THE PARTNERS, RESOURCES, and PROXIMITY for an EXTRAORDINARY EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE Central Ohio is home to a multitude of resources and potential collaborating partners, making this metropolitan area an ideal location for an extension campus.

Foremost among these partners are OhioHealth and the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, both of which have strong ties to OU-COM and have committed to collaborating with us to establish a regional extension campus. We also have support from the Ohio Osteopathic Association, headquartered in central Ohio. As we work in concert with these and other organizations, we have the potential to enhance the quality of health care in Ohio for generations to come.

The OhioHealth system includes Doctors Hospital of Columbus and Doctors Hospital of Nelsonville, both of which have played key roles in the clinical training and graduate medical education of OU-COM students and alumni from the college’s earliest days. OhioHealth also encompasses other outstanding facilities, such as Riverside Methodist Hospital, Grant Medical Center, Dublin Methodist Hospital, Grady Memorial and 11 other member and affiliate hospitals serving a 40-county area in the heart of the state. Many of these hospitals have participated in training OU-COM medical students and graduates.

In conjunction with OU-COM’s plans to establish the regional extension campus, OhioHealth has pledged to expand the number of clinical rotations for students and the number of residency and fellowship opportunities for graduates throughout its health delivery system.

OhioHealth and its facilities offer progressive leadership and an exceptional staff, attributes that have helped land it on FORTUNE Magazine’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” every year since 2008. In 2010, Thomson Reuters named Doctors Hospital of Columbus one of “America’s Top 100 Hospitals.”

Featuring one of the nation’s largest and most diverse osteopathic training programs, Doctors Hospital of Columbus recently opened the state-of-the-art Heritage Center for Osteopathic Medical Education. The center, funded in part by a $12.5 million grant from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, includes patient simulators, an anatomy laboratory, a 300-seat auditorium, and other resources of immeasurable value to medical students, residents, and other staff.

The Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, in the past dozen years, have provided more than $110 million in grants to serve communities in central Ohio and southeast Ohio and advance osteopathic medical care. Included in that sum is the more than $18 million invested in the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine to support a number of initiatives including an endowed research chair, a diabetes fellowship program, a number of medical research efforts, the construction of the University’s Osteopathic Heritage Foundations and Charles R. and Marilyn Y. Stuckey Academic & Research Center, and the construction of the Heritage Center for Clinical Training and Assessment & Community Clinic.

Valued medical training affiliations also exist with the central Ohio Mount Carmel Health System and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, both of which have superior national reputations for high quality health care. With an expected increase in the number of medical students, the potential for OU-COM to strengthen the current relationships and expand these training affiliations is enhanced. These health systems have well established and respected medical education programs, and our intent will be to facilitate collaborations among all health systems to help make central Ohio a national destination for high-quality medical education.

Mount Carmel is a large, highly respected health care system in central Ohio, serving over 500,000 patients each year. The Mount Carmel System consists of four hospitals (Mount Carmel West, Mount Carmel St. Ann’s, Mount Carmel New Albany Surgical Hospital, and Mount Carmel East), and numerous primary and specialty care practices, surgery and urgent care centers, and community outreach, hospice, and home care services. The system currently has six physician residency programs.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital, one of the largest children’s hospitals and research centers in the nation, offers a dually accredited (D.O. and M.D.) pediatric residency training program which is operated with OhioHealth’s Doctors Hospital. Nationwide Children’s Hospital is a partner through an affiliation agreement with Ohio State University. Nationwide Children’s Hospital provides care not only to central Ohio children, but children throughout the nation and internationally. Last year Nationwide Children’s hospital experienced approximately 900,000 patient visits from children from 48 states and eight countries. Children’s is undergoing a major facilities expansion, and upon completion projects 1 million patient visits per year. In addition to the dually accredited pediatric residency program, Nationwide Children’s Hospital offers seven other pediatric subspecialty residency programs.

OU-COM schedules elective rotations for its medical students at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, as well as at other Ohio State University sites such as James Cancer Center, Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital, OSU Hospital, OSU Harding Hospital, Dodd Hall/Davis Medical Center, and OSU Hospital East.

OU-COM is well-known for graduating physicians who are prepared to serve, and often return to, communities with rich cultural diversity. Twenty-six percent of incoming students in the fall of 2010 were from minority backgrounds. In 2008-2009, among Ohio’s seven medical schools, OU-COM graduated the highest percentage of African American and Hispanic physicians, 14.4 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively.11 Meanwhile, the college has long trained medical students in cultural competency through a popular voluntary program in which they examine their own cultural identities and explore culturally based patient beliefs about medical care.

OU-COM has worked with OhioHealth to develop the Physician Diversity Scholars Program, an initiative aimed at helping OhioHealth better meet the needs of their multicultural community with a more diversified medical staff. This program matches first-year Hispanic and African American students with OhioHealth physicians, providing students with a gateway to careers within the OhioHealth system. Minority medical students receive early and sustained exposure to professional practices through mentoring relationships with physicians from similar backgrounds.

Among the possible locations for an extension campus, central Ohio makes the most sense. In addition to current strong partnerships, OU-COM students, faculty, and staff will have ready access to the resources and diverse communities in the nation’s 16th largest city and the second fastest-growing major metropolitan area in the Midwest. The 2010 U.S. Census found that four out of five Ohioans live in the state’s highly diverse metropolitan areas, and just under half the population lives in the three largest population centers of Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus. Central Ohio is home to 1.75 million people, 26 colleges and universities, and 14 “Fortune 1000” headquarters. Forbes.com lists Greater Columbus 24th in its ranking of “Best Places for Business.” The metropolitan area also includes Delaware County, which the 2010 Census determined to be the 13th fastest-growing county in the United States, with a 43 percent increase in population from 2000 to 2006.

Together we have achieved so much; together we can achieve much more. The promise can become reality through our collective efforts to provide health care in some of the areas of greatest need in Ohio.

___________________________________11 Ohio Board of Regents

ORGANIZED for EXCELLENCE in PRIMARY CARE EDUCATION

Making the regional extension campus a reality will require the cooperation of multiple partners. In addition to our partners in central Ohio, Ohio University’s leadership, faculty, and staff are crucial to our success. All are enthusiastically committed to providing the university infrastructure and administrative support necessary to establish and operate a campus in central Ohio.

Unlike many medical schools’ regional campuses, this Columbus campus would not be operated as a satellite operation with a shoestring staff and an undue reliance on distance learning. The proposed project calls for a sophisticated facility, dedicated faculty and support staff, and wide-ranging student services.

Athens campus faculty and staff are committed to maintaining strong ties with peers on the central Ohio campus to ensure that students receive the same quality instruction, services, and support at both locations. Indeed, commitment at all levels is vital if the benefits of establishing an extension campus are to flow in all directions.

Faculty members at the central Ohio campus, while dedicated specifically to that enterprise, will maintain close ties with their counterparts in Athens and extend many of the unique academic experiences offered at the Athens campus to the central Ohio facility. These clinical relationships will also help strengthen the Athens campus faculty base.

The critical involvement of health care system partners will give OU-COM the opportunity to draw on the considerable talents and numbers of physician-educators in central Ohio. Their involvement will create a rich foundation for the students’ medical education and specialty rotations, and will prepare them to deliver medical care in the nation’s burgeoning patient-centered care model. Bringing such expertise into the OU-COM curriculum will increase opportunities for academic and research excellence while helping to counter the challenges of recruiting specialist physician-educators to southeast Ohio. The augmented patient-centered care curriculum provided at the central Ohio campus will allow students to develop and expand core competencies required of primary care physicians in delivering patient-centered care.

The regional extension campus will improve the medical education process. All four years of predoctoral medical training will be provided in a single geographic area, creating more primary care-focused graduate medical education opportunities within OhioHealth as well as with other partners—Mount Carmel Health System and Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Like their Athens peers, students at the regional extension campus will participate in OU-COM’s nationally recognized Centers for Osteopathic Research and Education (CORE) system, one of the nation’s largest, most advanced, and best supported osteopathic medical education consortiums.

Ohio University and OU-COM leadership envision a state-of-the-art facility to be developed at a convenient location in central Ohio. Up to 60,000 square feet may be required to house flexible classroom/multipurpose space, an anatomy lab, an imaging study lab, an osteopathic manipulative medicine lab, a learning resources center, several small group study rooms, large conference rooms, and faculty and staff offices. The cost of construction and the campus’ first three years of operation are estimated to be approximately $30 million.

Student services will have a strong presence on the new campus, with academic counseling, financial aid guidance, and other vital support services readily available. The college will work with its central Ohio partners and Ohio University to establish medical student loan forgiveness programs and increase scholarship dollars to alleviate the debt burden, one of the realities that discourages students from pursuing primary care medicine.

A central Ohio campus will allow OU-COM to expand research opportunities available to all students and further Ohio University’s emphasis on transformative learning, inspired teaching and research, innovative academic programs, exemplary student support services, and a wide range of leadership opportunities. Among other extracurricular options, students may participate in more than 20 clubs and organizations, summer research projects, and the annual OU-COM Research Day.

The new campus will be connected to all CORE sites and the Athens campus through the OU-COM Telehealth system, allowing our students across the state to benefit from a wealth of learning experiences. The best tools that technology offers will be available to aid in the teaching and learning process. The streaming digital video capabilities in the new Heritage Clinical Training and Assessment Center will allow students to review individual simulated patient interactions, preparing them for clinical encounters. Third- and fourth-year students will be able to retrieve several years’ worth of lectures via a digital archive.

Students at the regional extension campus, like their Athens peers, will benefit from OU-COM’s growing expertise in medical informatics, ensuring they are able to apply the technologies that will develop throughout their professional careers. Medical informatics advancements will allow students and researchers to analyze trends and discover potential service gaps, providing essential information for developing new educational, community, and research projects.

By addressing the need for osteopathic medical education in central Ohio, we will improve medical care in our communities and transform the future of our students and supporting organizations.

regional eXtension campus at a glancesize: Up to 60,000 square feet

Key spaces: Flexible classroom/multipurpose space, anatomy lab, imaging study lab, OMM lab, learning

resources center, several small group study rooms, two large conference rooms, and faculty and staff offices

estimated cost of new construction and first three years of operation: Approximately $30 million

anticipated location: Central Ohio, with ease of access to partner hospital campuses

staffing: Associate dean, administrator, faculty development director, IT coordinator, IT assistant, curriculum coordinator, clinical

skills and CCE coordinator, learning specialist, two administrative associates, financial aid/student services coordinator, osteopathic

manipulative medicine/CTAC skills coordinator, two anatomical scientists, integrated physiologist, microbiologist/immunologist, PharmD

faculty, pathologist, radiologist, OMM faculty, gross anatomy technician

___________________________________12 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2009 State Snapshots. 13 “Easing the Shortage in Adult Primary Care,” New England Journal of Medicine, June 25, 2009.

THE BENEFITS for PARTNERS and OHIOANS ARE PLENTIFUL

By taking advantage of the college’s record of educating physicians who choose to remain in Ohio, the central Ohio health systems will realize additional opportunities to attract more primary care physicians. National statistics show that about half of physicians set up practice within 50 miles of their residency location—and OU-COM’s numbers bear that out.

Ninety percent of the college’s graduates practicing primary care in Ohio completed their graduate medical education training in the state. The same is true for 95 percent of OU-COM graduates practicing primary care in central Ohio.

Pursuing strategies to emphasize the training of a larger number of primary care physicians makes perfect sense, especially considering the challenge of access to current primary care physicians, the dwindling number of medical school students choosing such careers, and the implications of federal health care reform.

OU-COM shares with its partners a strong commitment to osteopathic medical education, practice, and research. We can envision a healthier Ohio. The osteopathic medical education model and osteopathic physicians will make even more significant contributions to Ohio and the nation in the coming years.

Ohio will benefit greatly from these contributions. The state was ranked in the bottom quartile in overall health care quality in 2009 among all states, and although the state finished strong in a comparison of acute care measures, it was weak in preventive and chronic care measures. Compared to the nation as a whole, Ohio’s performance in quality of care for individuals living in low-income versus high-income communities is also weak.12

These issues can be reversed with access to effective and timely primary medical care, improving the overall quality of care. The primary care physician supply is associated with better outcomes for cancer, heart disease, and stroke patients; longer life expectancy; and improved self-rated health.13 By providing students with the tools to more effectively and efficiently provide primary and secondary prevention in a system enabled by information technology and team-based care, OU-COM will provide Ohio with physicians trained to help solve some of the current shortcomings within the health care system.

Economic impact data also make a strong case for a central Ohio OU-COM campus. Tripp Umbach, a consulting firm specializing in feasibility and economic impact studies for medical schools and systems, independently assessed the assumptions and pro forma statements, and in its final report, offered the following:

• “The financial plan developed by OU-COM is accurate and accounts for expected revenue and spending for a successful regional extension campus” (Tripp Umbach, 2011). The firm also endorsed the college’s calculations for the staffing plan, staff salaries, and operational costs.

• Developing a financially sustainable model through public-private partnerships is particularly important, given the expectation that state funding for medical education will continue to decline.

• OU-COM leadership has determined a central Ohio campus provides the greatest confluence of opportunities to ensure stable, future growth for OU-COM.

Medical schools bring economic benefits to their surrounding communities and to communities where their graduates practice. An OU-COM extension campus in central Ohio will be no exception. After careful review of OU-COM’s business plan for a new campus, Tripp Umbach also concluded that central Ohio will enjoy considerable direct and indirect economic gains, including:

• Putting $52.4 million into the economy, creating 238 jobs, and generating $1.6 million in taxes over the course of the 2012-14 period with new construction and start-up.

• Putting $26.4 million into the economy, creating 145 jobs, and generating $1 million in taxes in 2018, the year the campus becomes fully operational.

• Adding, in 2021, $80.4 million to the central Ohio economy through health care benefits and economic activity that extension campus graduates who practice in the region and state generate.

• Realizing, also beginning in 2021, health care savings from more available care and such factors as declines in emergency room visits for nonemergency issues. These savings are expected to total $10.8 million annually from that point.

• Realizing, by 2025, $20 million annually from commercial spin-off activity stemming from extension campus research.

Most importantly, this endeavor benefits Ohio citizens. Today, as it did three and a half decades ago, the opportunity exists for osteopathic medical education to transform Ohioans’ access to health care and improve their quality of life.

In the 1970s, the Ohio Osteopathic Association’s newsletter declared: “It is becoming increasingly apparent that a college of osteopathic medicine in Ohio is not only a good idea, but is a necessity if Ohio is to curb a severe shortage of physicians and provide the health care the people of Ohio need and deserve.”14 Now, that same highly successful medical school is prepared to accept those challenges anew in an urban setting.

With your support, opportunities are enhanced to meet the challenge of training excellent physicians who will practice in areas of greatest need.

___________________________________14 A Second Voice: A Century of Osteopathic Medicine in Ohio, by Carol Poh Miller, published 2004.

The opportunity for success depends upon you.

Our partners and friends have played an important role in

shaping the success of the Ohio University College of

Osteopathic Medicine. Today, we embark upon ambitious

initiatives outlined in the college’s strategic plan, Vision 2020:

Leading the Transformation of Primary Care in Ohio.

The outcomes will be dramatic, especially for those initiatives

that address some of the most pressing health care issues

facing Ohio, such as the need for more primary care physicians.

As we implement these initiatives, OU-COM and our partners

will become prominent national leaders in primary care medical

education.

Now, you can invest in our continued collective success; invest

in the vision that began in 1975; invest in the potential that

made possible our achievements. The promise lives in you–and

in the future of primary care in Ohio.

o h i o u n i v e r s i t y c o l l e g e o f o s t e o p a t h i c m e d i c i n e

John A. Brose, D.O.

Dean

Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine

204 Grosvenor Hall

Athens, OH 45701

740.593.9350

brose@ohio.edu

www.oucom.ohiou.edu

Roderick J. McDavis, Ph.D.

President

Ohio University

Cutler Hall

Athens, OH 45701

740.593.1804

mcdavis@ohio.edu

www..ohio.edu

Sharon B. Zimmerman, M.P.A.

Director of Medical Development

Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine

Grosvenor Hall

Athens, Ohio 45701

740-593-2176

740-707-0575 cell

zimmerms@ohio.edu