OHA started back in 2013. I had learned in conversation with one of Dr. Jealous’ students that they didn’t attend very many classes because they weren’t awarded continuing medical education units for it (CME). Physicians are required, depending on their state, to have a certain number of hours per year of continuing education and in order to attest to this one needs a certificate. Teachers of continuing medical education pay to be able to offer the CME, and their students pay to receive it. It’s not exactly a small exchange of money – between travel for the courses, time off work for the courses, and the hotel, course tuition and so on, getting enough credits can be thousands of dollars each year. So while this student explained their preference would have been to take only traditional osteopathic classes with Dr. Jealous, it really wasn’t financially feasible to do so. So they limited their time with Jim and paid their dues elsewhere. I had resources. This issue wasn’t a big concern for me because in addition to my practice I was a professor at a medical school and between teaching and lectures available there I had more than enough continuing education. Further, I’d hosted a few courses with Dr. Jealous in which I had offered CME through my Alma Mater and current employer. I decided to use my resources and see if I couldn’t get a source for Dr. Jealous to use so that he could once again offer CME for his courses.
Now those of you in the know, know this was a political landmine. I was pretty naive at the time, about the politics. But I like to work outside the box and what developed was the idea of OHA. Read More
I spent some time thinking through the process, expanded the idea from just offering CME to offering education and osteopathy, and came up with a framework. Then I spoke with Jim about the idea. He got a familiar smile when I told him – it was something along the lines of “I don’t think I’d put my energy into that.” and he said “If anyone can do it, you can.” We talked back and forth for a while, because I was ready to drop the whole idea if he didn’t like it, and said as much, but after a bit we decided it was worth pursuing.
Osteopathic Health Access 