Least shocking news of the day is that, as I predicted back in September, a consultant hired by Arkansas State University has confirmed the university's belief that there's sufficient demand to start a medical school osteopathic medicine variety in Jonesboro.

The Delta Regional Authority has thrown its weight behind the idea. The selling point is to create more primary care doctors, particularly for the Delta. Many discussions will be held about whether doctors produced in these fields can be counted on to stay in the underserved areas the program is supposed to help.

Yet to be heard, too, are the likely cautionary words from the state's existing medical school, which enjoys a state subsidy through both direct contributions and UAMS' role as a major recipient of federally subsidized health spending dollars. The country's med schools are already producing more graduates than residencies to accommodate them. But the expansion of government health care might spur a demand for doctors that rebalances that equation. Note that UAMS has expanded its educational arm to Northwest Arkansas, though not yet with a full medical school.

UPDATE: UAMSChancellor Dan Rahn talked to Leslie Peacock about his reaction to ASU's announcement. His reaction: "I don't think this proposal addresses our problems in Arkansas."

To be eligible to practice as a licensed physician, doctors must have completed some kind of post-graduate training in an approved residency program.Rahn said that nationally, 582 med school graduates were unable to get into residency programs last year, and nine UAMS graduates did not. Some of them may have been simply outmatched, but, according to the chancellor, while medical schools have been graduating more doctors, "the number of available residencies has not kept pace with the medical school graduation rate." One reason is the fact that Medicare capped the number of residencies it would support in 1997.

What's needed to address the shortage of primary care physicians, especially in Arkansas's rural areas, Rahn says: Keep the "private option" viable to insure the working poor and help hospitals' bottom line, plan at the state level on ways to increase the number of resident slots and push forward with reforms of the healthcare delivery system, including adding to the numbers of advanced practice nurses and physicians assistants.

Those were the conclusions that Rahn and Paul Halverson, who was director of the state Health Department at the time, provided in a report to Gov. Mike Beebe.

Rahn also noted that private osteopathy schools will cost students far more in tuition and fees than the state-subsidized UAMS, where tuition and fees come to around $24,000. According to this chart by the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, which tuition and fees as high as around $54,000 and none lower than around $30,000.

A feasibility study is also underway about starting a D.O. medical school in Fort Smith.

A med school in Jonesboro with 100 students will create "thousands of jobs," the news release says.

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Arkansas State University finds demand for an osteopathic med school