new osteopathic schools

I was reading several interesting articles about the need for increasing enrollment in medical schools to meet the demand for primary care physicians in the next few years and came upon a nice website from the Liason Committee for Medical Education that had a map of new schools (MD) that would be opening their doors soon. I was wondering if anyone knew of a similar site for DO schools? I like would like to apply to DO schools (as well as MD ) in a couple of years after prereqs,etc. but there aren’t any in the Maryland/DC area. I find it very interesting that Maryland has only 2/3 medical schools, but Florida now has 6 MD schools ( with 2 more in the pipeline) and 2 DO schools. It seems that Maryland could use some additional medical school seats as well. Anyone with any comments?

• barberry Said:

Thanks for the map. I have seen this one before and after looking at it asked myself " Why don’t we have any DO schools in Maryland?"

Interesting question in general why do or don’t medical schools (MD or DO) open in specific places. Certainly part of that is the “power” of entrenched medical community usually expressed thru state medical boards. For example, in the mid 1980’s 49 of the 50 states had approved Physician Assistants as licensed medical providers. The last hold out? A state that at the time even had a PA program at a state school! That was New Jersey. It was speculated that southern NJ is filled with doctors from the Philadelphia medical schools and northern NJ with docs from New york medical schools. This same phenomena shows up in podiatry in NJ, which had a very restrictive policy (5 years working for a licensed NJ podiatrist) to try to get a license if you did not do your internship/externship in the state. Again, even though there were only 6 podiatry schools in the country at the time, one was in Philadelphia, one was in New York City.


Back to your specific question. Last year at the conference we heard from John Fleischmann, who is the CEO of PCOM-GA and who literally built the school from the ground up. He will be back this year at the conference as an exhibitor and may be the person to direct this question to.


Also, since AACOM is headquartered in Maryland, we can certainly ask them as to why no DO schools exist in the state

I would be very interested to find out how these locations for new schools are selected. I read that VCOM just broke ground for a new campus in South Carolina ( which is also getting an new MD school). The website says that a good portion of their students were from the Carolinas thus the decision to build there. I personally know a number of Maryland students who went to med school in Pennsylvania. I’m curious why did PCOM decided GA was a good place to break ground. I’m sure it has everything to do with the established medical community, as you pointed out. Thanks for the info.

• barberry Said:

Isn’t that always the answer Judy?

• RAdamson Said: