Baptist Health Sciences University is a step closer to adding a College of Osteopathic Medicine, which could help remedy the region’s shortage of primary care physicians.
Dr. Peter Bell, a DO who has served as vice provost and dean of medical education at Baptist Health since 2021, expects the college will receive pre-accreditation status in the spring of 2023. “It seemed like a good complement to UT (University of Tennessee Health Science Center) across the street, which tends to produce more specialists, whereas we would be producing more generalists,” he said.