Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
For Immediate Release
Despite Massive Opposition, Osteopaths Poised to Accredit First US For-Profit Medical School in Nearly 80 Years
In a move which has sent waves of protest throughout the academic medical community, the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) is likely to accredit the first for-profit American medical school in nearly 80 years at their meeting this Saturday, August 25th. The Rocky Vista University, College of Osteopathic Medicine, outside of Denver, is owned and operated by a group of investors who also own and operate the American University of the Caribbean (AUC) School of Medicine in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. The chancellor of Rocky Vista University is a Coral Gables, Florida real estate investor and Chief Operating Officer of the American University of the Caribbean. After the Flexner Report of 1910 revolutionized medical education in the United States, all for-profit medical schools were intentionally closed by 1930 because of concerns about their poor quality of education. Since then all other attempts at opening for-profit schools have failed, most recently in 1999, when the American Medical Association and Wyoming Medical Society successfully fought the opening of a branch of Ross University, another Caribbean school, in that state. The American Osteopathic Association has taken a wait and see approach to the Rocky Vista, despite substantial outcry from its membership. Sentiment against Rocky Vista is widespread throughout the medical community and many fear that this will open the floodgates for many more offshore medical schools to open up osteopathic campuses in the US. This is a bleak day for American medicine and our patients, said Dr. George Mychaskiw, a professor of anesthesiology and author of a recent commentary critical of for-profit schools in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. Medical students are not commodities to be exploited and the training of new physicians should not be beholden to the interests of investors, looking to take more money away from the American health care system. In a time when there are 47 million uninsured Americans and medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, it is unconscionable for osteopathic medicine to so willingly enter into this embarrassing enterprise, said Mychaskiw. For-profit health care schools are illegal in neighboring Kansas. Despite this, the University Of Colorado School Of Medicine and several Denver hospitals have entered into informal affiliation agreements with Rocky Vista. The people of Colorado are falling prey to a modern day Music Man using physician shortage and health care crisis as convenient rallying cries to ignore the potential harm this may do to public health and safety. It is foolish to believe that a student will incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to obtain a medical degree and then open a charity clinic for migrant workers in Lamar, Cortez or some other impoverished and underserved community in Colorado. It is more likely that Denver will continue to have an oversupply of cosmetic surgeons while the most vulnerable members of the state go without care, concluded Mychaskiw in a recent policy analysis. COCA meets at the OHare Hilton in Chicago this weekend.
