Cleveland interests cast a greedy eye on NEOUCOM

The Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine has performed its mission and is continuing to perform its mission in exemplary fashion, graduating qualified physicians, many of whom stay in their home communities.

It attracts some of the best students area high schools have to offer, as well as excellent students from outside the area.

The medical school is centered in Rootstown and works with its three feeder universities, Youngstown State, the University of Akron and Kent State University and participating regional hospitals. It has produced a generation of medical doctors — more than 2,000 of them — and there is no reason why it cannot continue to produce doctors for generations to come.

The only thing that seems to endanger this highly successful medical school is regional politics. There are some political forces in Cleveland who apparently believe that anything good that happens in Northeastern Ohio must be located in Cleveland.

Time for it to end

It is incumbent on Gov. Ted Strickland and his chancellor of higher education, Eric Fingerhut, to squelch this Cleveland-centric nonsense. That they have allowed the movement to get this far is a more than troublesome because nonsense is the perfect word for the assault on NEOUCOM. It simply makes no sense to undercut this medical school, which was created to produce physicians who would practice family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and obstetrics/gynecology at a community level. And is doing just that.

The argument is made that a medical school should be linked to a major research hospital. Ohio already has such medical schools. NEOUCOM is unique in its commitment to work with its member colleges to educate doctors in a six-year program that is both academically sound and fiscally responsible.

If Strickland and Fingerhut are sincere in their desire to eliminate unnecessary duplication in the state’s university system and to tailor programs to specific needs, the last school they should be looking to change is NEOUCOM.

Clevelanders who truly believe in regionalization should be working to squelch this attack on NEOUCOM as well. Great efforts are being made to market the Cleveland-Akron-Canton-Youngstown region as “Cleveland Plus.” Such regionalism is healthy, but it requires mutual respect between the metropolitan areas.

Those Cleveland interests who are seeking to first dominate and then dismantle NEOUCOM are sending a counterproductive message to Akron and Youngstown and should be told so.

If Cleveland State University wants to become a partner in NEOUCOM with Akron, Youngstown and Kent, it should be welcomed. Just as soon as it is clear that CSU and others in Cleveland want no more than a place at the table — not that they want to move the table to Cleveland.