That's very surprising given the working relationship between the DO school in Glendale and the surrounding Banner hospitals. I personally rotated at Good Sam, Thunderbird, and even at the Banner hospital out in Sun City, and never noticed anything that I would consider as discrimination. Oh well, I guess you live and you learn. Thank you for sharing the info.
There is a difference between hospital and school administration, medical staff and department of surgery.
As adjunct faculty at Midwestern and on medical staff at several Banner facilities, I agree with you - I do not observe any outright bias. At the risk of sounding elitist, several of my best friends are osteopaths.
It makes sense for Banner, as the state's largest employer, to partner with local medical schools to provide educational opportunities. After all, current students are the physicians of tomorrow and Banner (in their not-so-secret plan) might be interested in hiring them in the future.
However, decisions about medical staff privileges are made by the current medical staff, and as such, are fluid, because they represent the current staff. In addition, the members of the department of surgery at each facility are responsible for deciding what the department specific requirements are. Administration does not usually question these outside of any overt legal problems. Thus, decisions about credentialing and privileges are not related to students from local DO schools rotating at their facilities.
Finally, the reason the decision was made was not because the allopathic surgeons made a decision about it, but because the osteopathic surgeons (most of whom trained here in town), felt that the quality of the osteopathic residencies and fellowships were inadequate. So, it was with their input that the decision was made. Of note, all of these osteopaths did allopathic residencies, so their may certainly be a bias there but...it is what it is, and I felt that it was worth mentioning here.