For over 150 years, Osteopathic physicians and their clinical teams have provided holistic approaches to healthcare. In 1874, Andrew Taylor Still, MD officially opened the first medical school in the United States to promote healing by restoring circulation and nervous system function. He called it Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM).

As the medical school and its Physicians were becoming well-known, Mr. Palmer opted to modify several of the Osteopathic Procedures and presented them to the public and his own apprentices as Chiropractic ‘therapeutic adjustments’ when the Palmer College of Chiropractic officially opened in 1895.

By 1905, the US government attempted to set a national standard for medical school curriculums, and asked Dr. Still to remove the ‘manipulative’ aspects of training (keeping only the allopathic (MD) ‘evaluative’ credentials). Dr. Still argued that osteopathic manipulations should be kept as an option when providing holistic and complete care. Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine were still permitted to grant either an MD or DO degree up until 1961 - depending on whether students wanted to enroll in the additional 200-300 hours of OMM training.

Today, there are over 40 Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine in the United States that fulfill the same requirements of Allopathic Medical Schools. Graduates of Osteopathic and Allopathic Medical Schools must take the same medicine board examinations, and are required to complete training programs across all medical disciplines - including Surgical Specialties and research. Many seek additional Fellowship Training to gain subspecialty expertise.

Since 2015, most Osteopathic Physicians who traditionally practiced OMT were trained in General Practice / Family Medicine and worked in small privately-run offices. As hospitals purchased these offices and combined them into larger physician groups, dwindling insurance reimbursements seemingly forced these physician groups to spend less time with patients so as to see more patients each day.

This directly contributed to a significant loss in a well-rounded clinical force due to physician burn-out. Moreover, insurance carriers have made it financially difficult for Osteopathic Physicians to offer OMT. Time is money. Group physician practices are often not set up to allow a physician to evaluate, perform procedures and document their work in the shorter appointment time necessary an 8-hour daily panel of 15+ patients to ensure a profit.

Today, less than 2% of Osteopathic Physicians regularly practice OMT in their outpatient offices. This gap in care has allowed Chiropractors and OMM-Workshop-trained MDs, physio- and other therapist types to provide services to adjust myofascial, joint and spinal dysfunctions. Unfortunately, they are not osteopathically clinically educated to perform the rest of the essential components of medical evaluation and management.

The Osteopathic philosophy consistently recognizes that the “body is a unit…interconnected and interdependent on every other component,” and holds that ‘optimization’ of a person’s body systems is most successful when collaborative and comprehensive.’

Fortunately, Dr. Behling is one of the few Physicians who still practices OMM, as well as offers individualized and comprehensive evaluation, education, guidance, treatment and surveillance on clinical conditions regularly managed by Physiatrists and other Palliative Care Medicine Specialists.