ACGME-AOA Education Committee visits OPTI-West at WesternU
In preparation for creating a single graduate medical education (GME) accreditation system, representatives from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the American Osteopathic Association Education Committee visited OPTI-West on July 22, 2014.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) announced in February 2014 an agreement to develop a single accreditation system for graduate medical education (GME) programs in the U.S.
The AOA House of Delegates, representing the nation’s more than 104,000 osteopathic physicians (DOs) and osteopathic medical students, voted July 19, 2014 to support the single accreditation system.
OPTI-West is a western states regional consortium of 80 osteopathic postgraduate medical education programs. The founding osteopathic collge partner is Western University of Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific (COMP) in Pomona, Calif. It is a vibrant, growing organization composed of five medical schools and more than 20 training hospitals and community partners.
An OPTI is a consortium of an osteopathic medical school and one or more teaching hospitals, the purpose of which is to establish a stronger and higher quality of postdoctoral training than can be realized by the individual institutions. The OPTI structure was developed to support GME by AOA and its Council on Postdoctoral Training (COPT) in 1998.
The ACGME and AOA Education Committee is visiting four of the 20 OPTIs across the country. The visiting committee members are Paul Friedmann, MD, John R. Potts III, MD, Gregory Smith, DO, Adrienne White-Faines, MPA, and Maura Biszewski.
Joining them at the meeting were OPTI-West and COMP officials, including COMP Dean Paula Crone, DO, and Michael Finley, DO, COMP Associate Dean and OPTI-West Chief Academic Officer. The group linked up via video conferencing with osteopathic medical college deans, directors of medical education (DMEs) and hospital administrators.
The purpose of the meeting was to expand the ACGME’s knowledge of OPTI and to educate OPTIs, program directors, DMEs and others about the ACGME and the application process.
