Comparison between Michigan and Texas COM

The following Open Letter to UNT Board of Regents and Chancellor on March 29th, 2009

The recent public hearing at UNTHSC regarding the proposal to add an M.D. degree to UNTHSC clearly showed the passion among the osteopathic community for their heritage and the acknowledgement of the prestige of an M.D. degree held by the local business and hospital leaders. Proponents of the M.D. degree argue that it will bring prestige and research funding to the school.

Despite the general consensus that Texas College of Osteopathic College (TCOM) is a great success story, it is ironic that the proponents of the M.D. program are willing to waste resources of duplicating a parallel program to produce M.D. physicians instead of DO physicians. This is absurd in business sense and purely discriminatory towards the osteopathic community because M.D.s and D.O.s are all physicians, period!

D.O.s are held accountable to the same standards of medical care as M.D.s D.O.s have staff privileges and serve well the community at all the local hospitals such as JPS, Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital, and Plaza Medical Center. TCOM students are doing clerkships at these hospitals under tutelage of M.D. preceptors. Why are the local hospitals still reluctant to have formal affiliations with UNTHSC’s medical school to create Graduate Medical Education (GME) slots so that osteopathic graduates can be trained at, which provides good quality and cheap labor and GME funding from Medicare?

TCOM students are as qualified as any other allopathic medical students in Texas. According the Texas Medical & Dental Schools Application Service (TMDSAS) of 2005, TCOM class of 2009’s average MCAT scores and GPAs were 28.3 and 3.60, respectively. Incidentally, these number placed TCOM class above the admitting classes of 2009 from UTHSC-San Antonio and Texas A&M University HSC.

It is a false assumption that osteopathic profession does not train students in research. UNTHSC and six other colleges of osteopathic medicine in the nation have already established dual DO/PhD physician scientist training programs to train students desiring doing research. The osteopathic institutions received over $100 millions in research in 2004. UNTHSC’s research funding achieved its record high with $ 41 million in 2010. Yes, these numbers are small. Most MDs and DOs are first and foremost clinicians. MD/PhD graduates, who initially chose this pathway because they wanted to pursue an academic career, only 25% of them actually do research in their careers. Most allopathic institutions harvest more research funding from to their strong graduate of bio-medical sciences programs.

I am TCOM graduate, specializing in Vitreo-Retinal surgery. Even in this small layer of the eye, the retina, different retina specialists will have different approaches to treatment of Age-Related Macular Degeneration and Diabetic retinopathy. Medicine is definitely as much as a science as an art. Therefore, osteopathic philosophy of holistic and preventive care will be a positive attribute to health care system. Texans and Americans deserve a true system of health care instead of a system of care fixing diseases.

Now, it is the responsibility of local hospitals in Tarrant County receiving the taxpayers’ money to collaborate with TCOM to provide the clinical training opportunities to its local medical students because they are well-qualified students and the community deserves it.

TCOM is a medical school and UNT and medical educators should take a stand against prejudice and coercion the D.O.s to change their title to M.D. in exchange for the educational opportunity. Furthermore, UNTHSC leaders should build on the TCOM’s success and invest its resources and efforts in partnering with other hospitals to create training sites. What are the odds of a new M.D. school would rival with the well-established UT-Southwestern or Baylor Medical School? Prestige comes from within, self-pride and confidence. A stronger TCOM added to its distinctive uniqueness will make it better well-known. As Dr. Ransom is from Michigan, he is well placed to know the success of College of Osteopathic Medicine in Michigan, which has secured 1,386 GME positions in 29 hospitals for D.O.s. TCOM should be able to do it too as there are only 4,978 DOs practicing in MI compared to 3,346 DOs practicing in TX. I am relying on your wisdom to allow a chance for TCOM to grow bigger to provide special care to Texans.