With Florida’s two-month legislative session underway, a Virginia-based medical school trying to establish a residency program in Vero Beach is hoping to be named as one of the state’s preferred medical schools before legislators adjourn in March.
It needs that recognition in order to send its medical school grads here to do their advanced, hospital residency training at Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital.
The Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, or VCOM, has been sending dozens of third- and fourth-year medical students to Vero for medical rotations for two decades. It was in the middle of planning its own Vero Beach training facility and residency program when Florida adopted a massive healthcare reform bill called the Live Healthy Act in 2024.
The bill established an official list of preferred medical schools eligible for a limited number of medical residency slots and gave a board of representatives from established Florida medical schools control over doling out those slots.
Since VCOM had no campus in Florida and was still working on its accreditation process, it was not included on that list. Diligent efforts to get added to the list in 2025 failed.
But this year, VCOM principals are getting the word out in Tallahassee with the help of a key legislator who may be in a unique position to help.
Former Vero mayor Rep. Robbie Brackett not only sits on committees dealing with healthcare issues, he’s also the whip of the powerful Republican majority in the Florida House this year.
When Brackett and state Sen. Erin Grall hosted a special legislative delegation meeting this month to discuss a Fellsmere water control issue, the legislators allowed public comment and VCOM President Dr. Dixie Tooke-Rawlins took the opportunity to address the legislators.
“I am with the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, and we have clinical training in Vero, with Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital. Although our main campus is located out of state, we’ve had students training in Florida for 20 years, with over 400 graduates practicing in the state,” Rawlins said, going on to explain the predicament caused when the Live Healthy Act changed the rules mid-stream as VCOM planned its Vero campus.
Getting on the state’s preferred list would trigger training opportunities for VCOM medical school graduates to do their three- to seven-year residencies in Vero – the final stage of becoming a licensed physician – and then possibly stay in Indian River County to work at one of the two hospitals, or establish a private practice.
“We’re trying to do this methodically,” Rawlins said. “We have been working with Cleveland Clinic and Indian River State College while we built up [our clinical training program for medical students] and now we’re starting on the residency program so that we will have” the complete spectrum of medical training, from medical school to residency, in Vero Beach.
Brackett said he had been talking “in great detail” about VCOM’s request with Vicki Soule, who is assisting VCOM in its effort to be listed. “I’m working on some things for her right now … and we’ll get back to you,” Brackett told Rawlins.
Soule, former longtime CEO of Treasure Coast Community Health, jumped in as an informal consultant to help Rawlins and VCOM with the push to expand medical training in Vero Beach.
As head of TCCH up until November, Soule had dozens of VCOM students training in her clinics under her physicians over the past few years.
The Jan. 9 deadline to file a new bill for the current legislative session that could have helped VCOM has passed, but according to Brackett, getting an amendment attached to an existing bill is still a possibility.
Brackett’s staff is working to find an appropriate bill that has a good chance of passing that can be amended to get VCOM added to the list of approved med schools.
There is a bill floating around designed to clean up and refresh the 2024 Live Healthy Act, Soule said last week. But as of press time Monday, no specific bill amendment for VCOM had been proposed.
There is a precedent for out-of-state medical schools to be brought into the fold, as the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine, headquartered in New Mexico, got its campus at Florida Institute of Technology added to the legislature’s list in 2025.
“I think the next step will be for me to meet with Rep. Brackett personally and I will attempt to arrange that as soon as possible. I have provided him with the wording that would need to be added,” Rawlins said.
Though there’s not much progress in Tallahassee to report yet, Rawlins and Soule have kept Hospital District Executive Director Frank Isele informed about the status of VCOM’s effort.
VCOM is in the process of renegotiating its lease on a three-story building on five acres owned by the Hospital District. Renegotiation was needed because the Live Healthy Act delayed VCOM’s plans to build its Vero campus for a year or more.
The planned campus location was chosen for its proximity to Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital, which has committed to creating a medical residency program for VCOM students.
Cleveland Clinic Florida has also pledged to expand training opportunities for its upper classmen to complete clinical rotations.
VCOM specializes in training primary care physicians on its five campuses to work in rural areas, and areas with a shortage of family medicine, pediatrics, gynecology and obstetrics practitioners.
Headquartered in Blacksburg, Va., VCOM has campuses in South Carolina, Alabama and Louisiana.
VCOM is a leader in rural medicine at home and in the developing world. The medical school faculty host a huge annual rural medicine conference, and doctors and students take medical mission trips to Central America to help patients without access to medical care.
