ALABAMA COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE

In the early 1990s, leaders in Alabama identified the need for more primary care physicians in the state, and in 2005, after years of coordinating activities to accomplish this goal, formed the Alabama Medical Education Consortium (AMEC), a 501(c) organization to help increase the production of these physicians across the state through the osteopathic medical education system. AMEC conducted a feasibility study which demonstrated that more than 60 percent of osteopathic medical students chose pr... imary care careers as compared to 20 percent of allopathic medical students. Over the next five years, AMEC built an extensive osteopathic teaching network in Alabama to provide third and fourth year training to medical students and created a Physician Pipeline to recruit Alabama students for enrollment in out-of-state osteopathic colleges. This required developing partnerships with 10 out-of-state colleges of osteopathic medicine, 26 state colleges and all state community colleges. In partnership with out-of-state Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, AMEC established an educational infrastructure that represents substantial clinical resources to provide clerkship rotations for Alabama students, as well as students from other states, enrolled in their programs. This educational infrastructure continues to expand and now includes over 400 Alabama physicians from communities throughout the state and 47 hospitals that include 15 core teaching sites and 42 educational sites.More