LECOM
Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine graduate Kassandra Botti, D.O., works in an emergency room that treats an estimated 46,000 patients each year. Dr. Botti’s training at LECOM prepared her well for her practice as an emergency medicine specialist at Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College, Pennsylvania.
“In comparison to other medical students and other interns and residents, I felt I was far better prepared,” says Dr. Botti, LECOM ’99, as she related her experience at a small medical college that has grown to be one of the largest in the country. “My education, both basic science and clinical were superior to my colleagues and my peers.
“To me, as grueling as it was to go through the classes every day, in the end, I was extremely well prepared,” she continues.“Today, I’m complimented quite frequently on my abilities, and I directly relate that to my education.”
Since being founded by the leaders of Millcreek Community Hospital in 1992, LECOM’s recognition by respected members of the medical community is well deserved. In 15 short years, the college, a training ground for future physicians and pharmacists, has secured its ranking by U.S. News & World Report as one of two largest medical schools in the United States. The number of LECOM graduates, at 67 percent, who choose primary care places LECOM at eighth in the nation for training family physicians and other primary care specialists.
At the same time, LECOM has emerged as one of the fastest-growing medical schools in the nation with a main campus at 1858 West Grandview Boulevard in Erie, Pennsylvania, a branch campus along the Gulf Coast in Bradenton, Florida, and a $31.5 million Health and Wellness Center adjacent to Millcreek Community Hospital in Millcreek Township that is expected to be completed by fall 2008.
“Our growth has come from extending our mission and responding to community need,” states LECOM President John M. Ferretti. D.O., F.A.C.O.I. “As long as we’ve done that, the growth has followed.”
A Renaissance in Medicine
A dedicated and highly respected physician, Dr. Ferretti is a visionary, who, along with the Millcreek Community Hospital administrators and board members, were well ahead of their time in establishing a medical school to meet the needs of patients in the region. In the 1980s and ‘90s when small community hospitals were either going out of business or merging, it was Dr. Ferretti and the Millcreek Community Hospital leadership, who, in order to preserve the osteopathic identity in northwest Pennsylvania, decided to diversify and extend its mission of health-care education not only to interns and residents, but also to students. Thus, the idea of LECOM was formed.
“With managed health care becoming the new healthcare delivery system in the United States, there is a need for more primary care physicians,” Dr. Ferretti explains. “For managed health care to be successful, the key was the primary care physician, and osteopathic medicine has always been noted for its wholistic or primary care approach.”
As part of a long-term strategic plan, LECOM would provide medical education, research and outreach, and through cooperative agreements with area hospitals and colleges, the College would greatly develop and enhance the osteopathic profession. By training future D.O.s, who specialize in musculoskeletal therapy and total person wellness, the school would also address the looming shortage of physicians in northwest Pennsylvania and various parts of the United States, which few perceived at the time. “We were the forerunners of a new renaissance in medicine, and today medical schools are opening and class sizes are increasing,” Dr. Ferretti notes. “Experts are predicting a shortage of anywhere from 90,000 to 200,000 physicians by the year 2020, so I think we ushered in a new era for physician education when we opened in 1993.”
After successfully identifying the long-term healthcare needs in northwest Pennsylvania, LECOM’s leadership noted a similar shortage of physicians in Florida and started a branch medical school in Bradenton in 2004. In 2001, and as a complement to its medical school program, LECOM established a School of Pharmacy at the main campus in Erie, and, in 2007, LECOM is extending the pharmacy school to the branch campus in Florida.
To date, 1,730 physicians and pharmacists have graduated from the school system, and total enrollment now stands at more than 1,800. Each year more than 6,000 prospective students apply for admissions to the college of osteopathic medicine and another 3,000 apply to the school of medicine. LECOM accepts 250 medical students in Erie and 150 in Bradenton, while the School of Pharmacy will take 130 for Erie and 84 for Bradenton.
Lifelong Learning
LECOM’s ability to attract many of the best and brightest minds is a result of being a school founded by physicians and health-care professionals who directly translate the needs of patients into a rigorous and comprehensive curriculum. Through Medical Associates of Erie, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Millcreek Health System which operates the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine and School of Pharmacy, Millcreek Community Hospital and Millcreek Geriatric Education and Care Center, students have access to physicians who are also instructors and professors at LECOM.
The medical school is the only one of its kind in the nation that offers student-centered curriculum with three pathways: traditional lecture-discussion, independent study and problem-based learning in a small-group environment. Additionally, the medical school now offers: a new fast-track three year family practice medical degree curriculum (Primary Care Scholars Pathway) that helps fill the need for more family doctors by reducing tuition costs and introducing them to their practices earlier; a post-baccalaureate biomedical sciences certificate program that increases career opportunities in health professions; and a master’s of science in medical education program that enables physicians to return to the classroom to become better teachers of other health-care professionals and, thus, improving overall patient care.
“Medicine is lifelong learning,” says Silvia M. Ferretti, D.O., LECOM Provost, Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs. “Our goal is to prepare our students for what the patient expects — a doctor with integrity, who is empathetic and most of all is competent. We set our goals and objectives based on what patients need so our graduates can become their health care partners.”
A Perfect Prescription for Health-Care Professionals
As the patient population ages and more demands are placed on medical providers, pharmacists are playing a greater role in patient health. Consequently, the establishment of the LECOM pharmacy program has brought an influx of healthcare professionals into the region and, with it, better access to quality care.
“We have pharmacists who work with patients directly and in physicians’ offices. We have faculty members at Saint Vincent, Hamot and the VA,” notes Dr. John Ferretti. “We have students now who not only receive part of their medical education through those various hospitals, but also are helping to provide services by assisting in educating patients about their medications, by assessing a patient’s drug therapy, and by creating a problem list and developing a comprehensive pharmaceutical plan for their care.
“This has brought a whole new concept to northwest Pennsylvania and the Erie area. Being able to integrate the pharmacist with the physician and provide what we think is a better health-care team and, therefore, ultimately better treatment for the patients.”
LECOM’s School of Pharmacy is one of the few schools nationwide that offers an accelerated three-year professional degree program. A traditional doctor of pharmacy degree takes six years to complete, but under agreements with participating institutions, students can finish two years of pre-pharmacy education as part of their undergraduate work and then complete LECOM’s accelerated professional pharmacy program in another three years.
For nontraditional students, such as Marlene Trambley, Pharm. D., the program began a new career path that she had always wanted to pursue, while being able to stay close to home. After teaching high school and college chemistry, physics and math for 30 years, Trambley graduated from LECOM in June 2006 at the age of 61 and today is a pharmacist for a local grocery retail store.
“For me,” she says, “LECOM was in Erie. I could finish in three years. It was what I always wanted to do, and I could fulfill a dream that I had way back in 1962.” Roger Brumagin, an assistant professor of Pharmacy at LECOM, is another nontraditional student who through his LECOM education embarked on an entirely new career. Brumagin, who had dual degrees in biology and chemistry, worked as an EMS instructor and research chemist at the former Hammermill Paper Company for 23 years before graduating from LECOM’s pharmacy program in 2005. He performed his residency at a new residency program established by Millcreek Community Hospital, and joined the pharmacy faculty at LECOM in August 2006 as a full-time LECOM employee and practicing pharmacist.
“Because we have Millcreek as a teaching hospital, because we have cooperative agreements with the VA, Hamot and with Saint Vincent, the Erie community is benefiting from that,” Brumagin notes. “Many of the graduating physicians who may not even be from Erie are staying in Erie, and making the doctor-to-patient ratio, at least in the immediate Erie area, something approaching what it really should be across the country.
“There is still a need for pharmacists in the Erie area, and we are helping to fulfill that need,” he continues. “The Erie community is benefiting from the fact that we do have a School of Pharmacy and College of Medicine right here producing professionals that are willing to stay and contribute to the health and wellbeing of the citizens of our community.”
A ‘Whole’ New Approach to Health Care
LECOM’s influence can be attributed to the school’s fundamental osteopathic philosophy, which stresses preventive health care while focusing on the whole person: body, mind and spirit. The Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine’s wholistic training is the reason that more than half of all osteopathic physicians practice in primary care medicine — pediatrics, family practice, obstetrics and gynecology, and internal medicine.
“The ability to positively affect our community in such a dramatic way is key to the purpose of LECOM’s mission, its existence,” says Kevin Thomas, D.O., a clinical assistant professor of Family Medicine/ Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine at LECOM.
“We found a very significant percentage of students practice very close to where they train. We want to make sure there are great learning opportunities beyond their school years and we have developed a number of residency programs in Erie and throughout Pennsylvania. They have great opportunities here, so we hope they are going to stay.”
After graduating from LECOM in 1998, Dr. Thomas completed his internship at Shenango Valley Hospital (UPMC Horizon-Farrell) and his family practice residency at The Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh (West Penn). He joined the clinical faculty in family practice residency, helping to establish an osteopathic family practice residency program to run alongside the allopathic family practice program, and eventually became program director. In 2004, he left West Penn to join LECOM to work at the branch campus in Florida. Today, he is both a professor and practitioner, and a participant in LECOM’s Master of Science in Medical Education program.
“The obvious advantage of teaching and practicing at LECOM is that you stay current in health-care trends and medical advancements. It’s an advantage to me as the clinician, to the students I teach and to the patients I care for.”
The Community as a Campus From its leadership to its faculty and progressive programs, LECOM has looked for new and innovative ways to positively impact the health and economic vitality of the region.
The medically integrated Health and Wellness Center, which will be operated by a national health and wellness center management team, Power Wellness, will provide patients, students and the Erie region with access to health-care education including a facility program which includes yoga, swimming, traditional aerobic exercise and spinning. They will have access to integrated and alternative medical modalities as well.
Wellness is based on a patient with a physician partner developing a unique health-care plan including exercise, nutrition, stress reducers and purpose for living. That partnership for better health is the driving force behind where LECOM started and where it is now — a school dedicated to training the next generation of health-care professionals.
“Erie is set to have tremendous growth because people will know they can get the medical care they want here,” says Dr. Silvia Ferretti. Adds Dr. John Ferretti, “We truly use the community as our campus.”
For more information, see www.lecom.edu.