All-In For Accreditation

You’ve surely heard about the proposed Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Smith. If not, it’s one of our cover stories this week.

The principals involved are engulfed with the accreditation process, and one of the steps for a proposed college as the applicant status unfolds is to pay up.

Specifically, on or about Aug. 1, the ACOM will submit a roughly 500-page application document to the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA), and at that point, the college will have to put up $32.25 million in unencumbered funds, held in two escrow accounts.

What’s it for? In the event the medical school opens but then fails, the money would be paid to COCA, who would use it to pay for and place the enrolled medical school students in Fort Smith into another medical school in the United States.

 “It’s really a hedge against everybody wanting to be in the medical school business,” said Kyle Parker, chief executive of the ACOM. “You have to have the power to take $32 million and set it aside for six years. You can make interest off the money, but that principal stays unencumbered in the event you don’t graduate that first class.”

The money would be returned to the ACOM in the spring of 2020, upon graduating its first class of doctors.

For the record, Parker said, the scenario of failure just described has never happened in the history of osteopathic schools in the U.S.

The first osteopathic medical college opened in 1892 in Missouri. Today, there are 30 accredited throughout the U.S.