- April 29, 2024
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Come August 2024, the Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine in Horizon West will welcome its inaugural class of the next generation of professional health care leaders.
The first class at OCOM will have 90 students. At full enrollment, the school plans to have 180 students.
The mission of the school is to train caring and competent osteopathic physicians who will have an impact on the Central Florida community, the nation and the global community.
OCOM benefactor Dr. Kiran C. Patel said the school is going to change health care for the region for generations to come.
“With an innovative medical school curriculum meticulously crafted by our esteemed faculty, under the leadership of the dean and chief academic officer, Dr. Robert Hasty, our institution stands at the forefront of modern medical education,” Patel said.
Hasty said Patel’s first priority was to set the highest standard for all measurable outcomes.
“We have recruited nearly 1,000 credentialed clinical faculty to achieve this vision,” Hasty said. “OCOM was built from the ground up in pursuit of our vision to create a world-class medical school. The educational journey that awaits our medical students at OCOM promises to be transformative in training the physician of the future by cultivating their expertise and compassion. Through OCOM’s modern and comprehensive training, our graduates will emerge as well trained and caring physicians, ready to make a profound impact on the lives of the countless patients they will care for.”
COLLEGE COMPONENTS
OCOM broke ground in July 2022 at 7011 Kiran Patel Drive.
The campus is 10 minutes west of Walt Disney World and is located off the Schofield Road exit of State Road 429.
“After carefully considering 10 locations in the greater Orlando metropolitan area, we fell in love with Horizon West,” Hasty said. “Factors that we considered included the following: safety, access, traffic, amenities, growth potential, master planning, lot availability for our 25-acre campus and feel. Horizon West came in No. 1 in every category of our considerations.”
Hasty said the school was designed from the ground up to be the medical school of the future and support the needs of the organization’s students, faculty and staff for generations to come.
The single, three-story building spans 144,000 square feet and is built with a modernist-style architecture.
The project cost about $75 million, not including the 360 multi-family apartments adjacent to the campus.
The first 180 apartments in phase one will be completed in June 2024. Phase two will encompass 180 additional apartments which are estimated to be finished come August 2024.
While the apartments will be popular among the OCOM medical students, there will be a number of units open to the general public, as well.
The aesthetics and natural light of the school building were essential design components, as Hasty said evidence suggests they improve outcomes for adult learners.
The building has an Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine lab, virtual anatomy lab, research lab and a simulation lab, as well as multiple classrooms and a library.
Students will have access to numerous private and small-group study spaces.
In addition, behavioral services, such as mental health counselors, will be on site for student support.
The building is secure, with assigned access to students, faculty and staff, allowing for the highest security level.
“We designed it from the ground up to be the most modern medical school in the country,” Hasty said. “In addition to our modern and beautiful facility and campus, the curriculum was designed from the ground up to include the most evidence-based curricular elements, including active learning through case-based learning, a ‘lecture-less’ learning environment, pass/fail system, virtual anatomy and a significant amount of simulation training to train a safe, caring and competent physician. In the advancement of our mission, we will have a number of support systems for our students, including an on-site mental health counselor, a learning specialist for each year and a caring culture among the faculty and staff.”
The school will be led by Hasty, as well as a Board of Trustees and executive leadership team.
The first year of matriculated students will begin with a maximum class of 97.
Faculty and staff comprises 71 full-time employees — eventually reaching about 110 when OCOM is in full operation — covering teaching faculty, staff and administration, as well as more than 1,000 credentialed physician faculty at the school’s affiliated hospitals and healthcare systems.
ACADEMIC AFFILIATIONS
To achieve OCOM’s goal, the medical facility already has secured affiliations with 20 hospitals, medical centers and health care organizations, with more in the works.
The affiliations will allow medical students at the school to begin rotations in 2026.
OCOM is an exclusive medical school partner with the Dr. Kiran C. Patel Institute for Graduate Medical Education. The organization has a vision to create 1,000 newly developed residency positions over the next 10 years.
Recently, OCOM also has partnered with AdventHealth University.
Established in 1992, the university offers dozens of health care degrees and certificates, including two pre-med tracks: a bachelor’s degree in health sciences and a bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences.
The new collaboration will provide a multitude of benefits, including allowing AdventHealth University students and alumni in one of the two degree programs to be guaranteed interviews for admission into OCOM.
In addition, OCOM students will rotate through various specialties at AdventHealth hospitals beginning in 2026. Several AdventHealth physicians serve as OCOM faculty.
“We are thrilled to partner with the Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine,” C. Josef Ghosn, president and CEO of AdventHealth University, said. “This partnership creates valuable pathways for our graduates to grow and succeed in the field of medicine.”
Hasty said the school is going to change health care for the region for generations to come.
“With an innovative medical school curriculum meticulously crafted by our esteemed faculty, our institution stands at the forefront of modern medical education,” he said. “The educational journey that awaits our future medical students promises to be transformative. They will enter from esteemed schools like AdventHealth University and emerge as highly proficient and caring physicians, expected to fulfill the physician shortage within the Central Florida community.”
COMMUNITY IMPACT
According to an independent study conducted by Tripp Umbach, OCOM is a more than $200 million investment in the community that is expected to deliver more than $1.7 billion in local economic impact by 2045.
The report states the campus’ direct and indirect economic impact during the two-year construction and start-up period alone is expected to total $62.4 million, provide 338 construction and other jobs, and add $2.6 million in taxes to communities in the Central Florida region.
When the school is fully operational in 2028, OCOM is estimated to have an economic impact — direct and indirect economic benefits — of $46.4 million, with more than 345 jobs and to add $3 million in taxes to communities in the region.
In addition to the operational impact, by 2030, the economic impact of the proposed campus will grow to $80.4 million as Central Florida communities begin realizing health care benefits and additional economic impact as graduates of the campus locate in the region and state.
Tripp Umbach estimates by 2030, when the medical students complete their residencies, these new primary care physicians also will yield real savings, as emergency room utilization declines, for example. These savings are expected to total $10.8 million annually by 2030.
By 2030, commercial spin-off activity from research completed at the proposed campus will equal $100 million annually, sustaining about 800 additional jobs in Central Florida.
By 2045, the total economic impact of the proposed college to the Orlando region will equal more than $1.7 billion, support more than 9,000 jobs and contribute more than $86 million to state and local governments.
OCOM will have many more impacts than just economic to the area.
Through community service activities, including health fairs and service at the school’s affiliated free clinic, Shepherd’s Hope, to bringing the expertise of the school’s physician faculty to local hospitals and clinics, OCOM will be an integral part of the community.
“We feel that OCOM will be judged by the excellence of the caring and expert physicians that we will produce,” Hasty said. “What we are doing here will positively impact the community’s health for generations to come. … Being part of the team that will create a medical school that will train caring and expert physicians is an incredible opportunity, honor and responsibility.”
