Osteopathic medical education: Studying the economic effects

A new economic impact report emerged from an effort to understand the value osteopathic medicine brings to the health care system and to answer fundamental questions about what would be lost without osteopathic medicine. Robert A. Cain, DO, FACOI, FAODM, president and CEO of American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. Here he explains that the report is the first of two efforts — alongside a research report — designed to provide data on the osteopathic workforce, its economic effects, and how physicians trained with an osteopathic mindset influence local health care and economies.

Medical Economics: In late 2025, the Association published an economic impact report. How did that report come about?

Robert A. Cain, DO, FACOI, FAODME: One of the things I don't usually do is focus and talk about me, but I actually have to do that in this particular case. A few years ago, I started looking at our growth and thinking about our future and asking questions of the leadership across the osteopathic community. And the scenario in question ultimately ended up looking something like this: If we were to awaken tomorrow and all evidence of osteopathic medicine were suddenly gone, what would be missing? What would be hard to replace? And who would care? And what the conversation was really about is, what is the value we bring to the health care system? There are two degrees, two separate medical degrees in the United States, and maintaining that is a challenge. There's a cost to that. There's there's work to be done to have those two separate pathways. So why are we here? And what is it that we can make a difference in the health care system because of our presence? And as I started looking for the data to really guide that conversation so that we could have it more effectively, we started realizing we needed more data. We needed more numbers. So what we're actually doing, what you're referring to, is the first of two reports. So one is a workforce and economic impact report. The other is a research report. What is the work being done by our colleges of osteopathic medicine that focus upon the tenets or the principles of osteopathic medicine? So we can think about how that's impacting health care overall, through the research side. The workforce report and the economic impact is to look at, by producing these physicians who practice with a certain mindset, where are they going, and how are they therefore, then, influencing the local health care as well as the local economy?