The Sunday, August 11, 2024 Edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch featured the new
LECOM-Mercy Hospital Jefferson Regional Campus. The article emphasized the multiple strengths that set the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) apart from other medical schools.
Mercy and LECOM are mission-centered organizations; with LECOM providing a model to serve the community. Mercy-Jefferson Hospital hopes that the new teaching program will remedy the area’s doctor shortages. Less than 10% of the region’s population has earned a post-secondary education degree; and LECOM offers four paths to a healthcare doctoral degree with its doctor of osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, dental, and doctor of podiatric medicine degrees (DO, PharmD, DMD, and DPM).
The LECOM mission underscores the solution that is actively strengthening the Medical Profession Pipeline, one driven solidly by its Early Acceptance Program; a critical component that is making a noticeable difference in the healthcare landscape. Additionally, partnership discussions have placed observable pressure on Graduate Medical Education (GME), highlighting efforts not to break up the path to establishing a physician pipeline. The LECOM Consortium of Academic Excellence (LCAE) is an important resource in safeguarding the uninterrupted continuation of that pipeline. Strong faculty development also ensures access to future residency programs supported by LECOM Masters in Medical Education options and additional LCAE faculty development resources.
LECOM offers low tuition, identifying students from the community who may seek to become healthcare professionals. Helping to facilitate their objectives while also helping them to incur the least debt are key distinctions that set LECOM apart from other medical schools. The data that supports the way in which LECOM will ensure less student debt (compared to other COMs in the region) makes LECOM a truly desirable partner for Mercy.
The previously mentioned low tuition – among the lowest in the nation for medical schools – and
the impressively impactful LECOM student scholarships that are awarded to students who, otherwise, may not have had the opportunity to attend medical school further underscore the ways in which LECOM is actively combating the physician shortage. Each year, a host of scholarship fundraisers, from competitive golf tournaments and 5k running competitions to the eagerly awaited pair of LECOM Student Scholarship Auction Galas supply critical resources to bolster the scholarship fund.
LECOM consistently has distinguished itself among the highest recognized colleges in the US News and World Report rankings for graduating the most Primary Care Physicians and for effectively engaging the most medically underserved areas.
The College also has distinguished itself solidly at the top of diversity rankings for markedly
advancing minority doctoral degrees.
Multiple programs across the healthcare disciplines, and campus locations across three different states accentuate the depth of offerings and profound reach that LECOM has established to stem the physician shortage.
In this most recent endeavor, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine scholars will spend the next two years in Jefferson County, shadowing doctors and finishing the final years of their medical degrees.
Administrators are confident that the Program — Mercy’s first non-urban teaching site — can increase during the next several years and demonstrate to future doctors the opportunities available to them, should they choose careers in rural settings such as Jefferson County. Program leaders are confident that the teaching program will fundamentally remedy physician shortages and that doctors are more likely to take positions in the communities in which they were trained – thereby creating a healthcare pipeline in a needful area.
LECOM is pleased and proud to be instrumental in championing this path forward, one that
betters the future of community health and wellness.