Ok, since DO is essentially the same thing as an MD, except for including OMM, this doesn't make any sense. The DO/MD degree would be the exact same thing as the DO degree. MD training plus OMM = DO = proposed MD/DO.
Edit: Oh, okay. I guess this part is a pretty good reason to make the dual degree.
"But having that dual degree offers access by our students and graduates to programs currently or increasingly restricted to graduates of LCME accredited institutions."
Total waste of money to go down this road for a student, and foolish for a school to do this. Steer clear of things like this.
First, having an MD that isn't LCME accredited is basically the equivalent of having an offshore MD. It perhaps is the letters some patients are more comfortable seeing, but professionally in the US, you are not going to be the equivalent of and MD from an LCME accredited school. You won't be regarded the same by residencies, won't be regarded the same in the match, etc. Sort of like in law where there are folks who get JD's from non-accredited law schools and find themselves severely limited career-wise because they took an outside path. The degree letters aren't what opens the doors, it's a degree received
through a particular accrediting body that opens the doors. You don't need the MD, you need the LCME blessing. Heck, I could sell you a piece of paper that says I am decreeing you an MD, but try to use that to get a job. So this is a huge scam and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone unless they themselves have some personal, self loathing issue with practicing with different letters on their white coat.
Second, if KCUMB is suggesting that DO is simply an MD who knows OMM, they are severely undermining the underpinnings of osteopathy, and this would be a huge step toward eliminating it. Osteopathy isn't about OMM, it's about philosophical differences in the approach to medicine, which have been gradually eroding. The DOs broke away from the MD fold decades ago, and tried to set up their own field, because they found the allopathic practice of medicine philosophically wrong. It wasn't about OMM, it was ideological. If they now want back in, they need to lose the DO degree and come back, not try to create a new "DO/MD" degree that basically concedes that they like different letters but not to be outside of the fold. You either have philosophical differences with MD or you don't. If you don't, then get your school LCME accredited and make your school be an MD program. You can still offer OMM as a non-accredited elective -- several MD programs do this, along with things like alternative medicine and acupuncture.
Also it should be noted that most MD programs aren't offering OMM not because they can't, but because they don't buy into it. As mentioned, a few places offer optional electives in it, much as they might for alternative medicine, accupuncture, etc. So outside of the osteopathy world, most physicians don't see OMM as adding something necessary to your skillset. As such, most in the MD world wouldn't look at a dual MD/DO program where the only difference was OMM particularly favorably. You'd always be better off in the eyes of the allopathic establishment in getting an MD from an allopathic school and taking an elective in OMM someplace than to go to a school that offers a joint degree.
So yeah, this is a silly idea by a school that is apparently conceding that its student body doesn't really want to be DO. If a lot of places feel like this, it may be time for the AOA to approach the LCME and talk about merging osteopathy out of existence and back into the fold.
