PA Program Gains Director, Renewed Accreditation Status

Jason Kessler, M.D., FAAP, brings both left- and right-brained perspectives as the new program director and chair of DMU’s physician assistant program. After earning his medical degree from the University of Iowa and completing a pediatric residency at Tod Children’s Hospital in Youngstown, OH, he practiced for almost 10 years as a pediatrician, most recently in Muscatine, IA. He then became the medical director for Iowa’s Medicaid enterprise, a role that involved utilization management, process evaluation and quality improvement.

Kessler is also the author of St. Bartholomew’s Blood, a medical mystery/thriller described as “gripping” and “very hard to put down” in reviews on Amazon.com. He’s a musician with several original rock CDs to his credit. He plays guitar, keyboards and harmonica and provides vocals for the Des Moines-area band Chasing Chaos.

Kessler’s diverse background and positive experiences with physician assistants make him a good fit in his new role. “After working in utilization management, I was thinking of what I enjoy and what I am good at. That includes teaching while in practice and quality and process evaluation, a lot of what I’ll do here,” he says.

He joined DMU shortly after the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) granted accreditation-continued status to the PA program. That status is granted when a currently accredited program is in compliance with ARC-PA standards.

ARC-PA placed the program on probation in 2016 due to concerns relating primarily to the second-year curriculum. During probation, the program remained fully accredited, and the status did not affect students’ ability to take the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam of the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants.

“I could not be more proud of the intense, creative, collaborative work everyone in this vital program delivered on a rather aggressive timeline,” says Jodi Cahalan, Ph.D., M.P.H.’01, M.S.’93, PA-C’89, DFAAPA, dean of the College of Health Sciences. “As our colleagues know, preparing for major accreditation visits and reviews adds tremendous stress to an already challenging environment. I commend each and every member of the department for work that far exceeded the norm.”

In addition to Kessler’s appointment, Holland Taylor, PA-C’07, was named the PA program’s assistant director. She joined the program in 2015 as academic coordinator and assistant professor.

PA Class of 2019 Profile