Pending accreditation, Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine will soon have another regional extension campus to its name.
OU-HCOM officials announced Monday a partnership with Cleveland Clinic to build a regional extension campus on the Clinic’s South Pointe Hospital campus at 20000 Harvard Ave. in Warrensville Heights.
OU-HCOM will be responsible for $36 million of the project’s $49.1 million cost that will be taken from the university as debt to fund the project. This money will go toward funding the campus’s staff, said Jack Brose, dean of OU-HCOM.
“The university is standing behind it,” Brose said. “(OU President Roderick McDavis) and the provost are extremely enthusiastic behind the project.”
Cleveland Clinic will use its contribution to go toward building operations, faculty and staff.
Cleveland Clinic is most looking forward to encouraging its students to stay in the area with the partnership, said David Bronson, president of Cleveland Clinic regional hospitals.
“Ohio University really delivers a large number of primary care physicians,” Bronson added. “It just made sense. That’s what we’re looking to develop in our area. Ohio University was the best we could think of.”
If the campus is approved by the American Osteopathic Association’s Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation and the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, it will enroll 32 students in July 2015.
This agreement will also put OU-HCOM students in rotations in the Cleveland Clinic hospitals.
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