The Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine will reserve five seats for Wichita State University students beginning in the fall of 2025.
The two institutions announced the admissions partnership Thursday, but they have talked about a collaboration since 2019. Students in the program will be able to start medical school at KansasCOM after their third year at WSU, cutting a year of school off the process of becoming a doctor.
Because WSU does not have a medical school, the collaboration will strengthen the university’s pre-med program, WSU president Rich Muma said.
“Students will learn more about the health sciences that happen in osteopathic medical schools much earlier, get connected to the school much earlier and are more likely to be successful in that way,” Muma said.
KansasCOM president Tiffany Masson also said the program will help more students in Wichita consider a career in medicine and eventually give back to their communities.
“I think it really opens up the pathway for Wichita State University students to see the possibility of them being an osteopathic physician,” Masson said. “It opens up the possibility that they could see themselves actually becoming a physician serving the underserved and serving our rural areas.”
WSU is joining five other schools in Kansas and one school in Missouri with similar admission partnerships with the medical school. Those include Friends and Newman universities in Wichita.
KansasCOM is trying to tackle Kansas’ physician shortage through its admission partnerships, Masson said.
“If we take Kansas-based students, we get them into a Kansas program, we ultimately provide them clinical rotations in their third and fourth year in Kansas, and ultimately continue to build out residency programs in the state, they are more likely than not to be able to stay in the state of Kansas,” Masson said.
More than 50% of people in Kansas do not have proper access to a doctor, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
KansasCOM – which welcomed its first class of students in 2022 – is Kansas’ first and only school of osteopathic medicine.
