Source: Scripps Health. MD vs DO: what’s the difference when choosing a doctor? December 1, 2025. Updated September 30, 2026. https://www.scripps.org/news_items/4898-md-vs-do-what-s-the-difference-when-choosing-a-doctor (accessed October 3, 2026).
Scripps Health, the Cleveland Clinic, and the Mayo Clinic each maintain a patient page that answers one question: What is a DO? Each explains the DO with comparison to the MD, never the reverse. Hospitals do not write explainers for questions nobody asks. These pages exist because patients read two letters after a physician’s name and do not know what they mean.
Each page offers reassurance first. Mayo calls a DO “a fully trained and licensed doctor.”1 Cleveland Clinic calls a DO “a physician licensed to practice medicine.”2 At Scripps, family physician Stephanie Posadas, DO, puts it most plainly: “We have the same profession and role, just different degrees.”3 That is the equivalency message, and it is accurate. The state license, not the degree, makes the physician.
Then each page changes direction. Mayo names manual medicine as a major difference, although only some DOs use it.1 Cleveland Clinic advises, “If you want a doctor that’ll take a more holistic approach, you may want to consider looking for a doctor of osteopathic medicine.”2 Scripps tells readers there is no difference in quality of care, then advises that a preference for a traditional approach points toward an MD and a preference for a whole-person view points toward a DO.3 Dr. Posadas then cautions against “focusing too much on whether a doctor is a DO or an MD.”3 The patient learns in one paragraph that the letters do not matter and in the next how to choose between them.
The hospitals did not invent this. Cleveland Clinic and Mayo both list the American Osteopathic Association’s “What is a DO?” page among their sources.1,2 The mixed message is the profession’s own: equal to MDs, yet distinct from them. Mayo’s reference list also includes a 2022 study assessing one New York City community’s knowledge of the osteopathic profession.1 Public unfamiliarity has become a research subject in its own right.
The dates matter. Mayo’s answer is dated 2022, Cleveland Clinic’s review 2023, and Scripps revised its page on September 30, 2026.1-3 Osteopathic physicians are now about 11% of US physicians, and roughly one in four medical students attends an osteopathic school.2,3 The explaining continues anyway. After decades of public education, three of the country’s best-known health systems still need to translate two letters. The problem is not clinical. It is lexical: a degree designation patients do not recognize, attached to a license they already trust.
References
1. Bauer BA. Osteopathic medicine: what kind of doctor is a D.O.? Mayo Clinic. November 29, 2022. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/expert-answers/osteopathic-medicine/faq-20058168(accessed October 3, 2026).
2. Cleveland Clinic. Doctor of osteopathic medicine. Updated April 11, 2023. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/24893-doctor-of-osteopathic-medicine (accessed October 3, 2026).
3. Scripps Health. MD vs DO: what’s the difference when choosing a doctor? December 1, 2025. Updated September 30, 2026. https://www.scripps.org/news_items/4898-md-vs-do-what-s-the-difference-when-choosing-a-doctor (accessed October 3, 2026).