LECOM looking at adding dental school for Bradenton area

Bradenton Herald file photo
The Bradenton campus of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic medicine is located at Lakewood Ranch.

MANATEE  -- Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, which already has a Manatee County campus at Lakewood Ranch for students seeking to become osteopathic physicians and pharmacists, announced today that it is looking at adding a dental school to the Bradenton area by 2012.

LECOM is also planning adding a dental school in Erie, Pa.

"The College has determined that dental medicine plays an important role in the team approach to better health care involving physicians, pharmacists and other health care professionals," LECOM said in a press release.

"LECOM projects the opening of the school with the first dental students matriculating in 2015. The College also has begun the planning for a dental school to serve the State of Florida from LECOM’s Bradenton campus in 2012," the press release said.

"Both locations will employ a community-based clinical plan, which will allow dental students to provide dental care in smaller dental clinics in off-campus neighborhoods where the need for care is the greatest. Unique among dental schools, LECOM will utilize the problem-based, patient-case based educational curriculum that has been successful preparing osteopathic physicians in Erie, Bradenton, and the newest campus, LECOM at Seton Hill in Greensburg, Pa.," according to LECOM.
 
For more, see Thursday's Herald.
 
Jim