OU Purchases Mobile Clinic
The University of Oklahoma Board of Regents approved the purchase of a mobile clinic unit, Sooner Schooner II, for use by the OU College of Medicine in Tulsa on May 10.
The College of Medicine, Tulsa, in association with the State Department of Health, will increase healthcare outreach to provide primary patient care to the underserved in northeastern Oklahoma as well as assist in emergency management response. The College of Medicine also has plans to share the mobile clinical unit with the new OU-Tulsa College of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine for training exercises to prepare for statewide disaster events.
“The approval of this program underlines OU’s commitment to improved healthcare for Tulsans and especially to meeting the medical needs of underserved families,” OU President David L. Boren says.
The mobile clinic will operate a minimum of 40 hours per week, offering primary patient care to the at-risk population, including the uninsured, as well as to expand current programs to provide student clinical rotations.
“Oklahoma is the only state that reported an increase in age-adjusted death rates throughout the 1990s, and that rate continues to increase at 3 percent a year,” says Dr. Gerry Clancy, president of OU-Tulsa. “The OU mobile clinic will provide health-care services to locations in the community that need access to health care as well as new school-based clinics and Tulsa Housing Authority complexes. OU-Tulsa already serves 25 schools through 15 area school-based clinics. Additionally, OU clinics are located at two Tulsa Housing Authority apartment complexes. Sooner Schooner II will have telemedicine technology that will allow these mobile primary care clinics to link with OU Physician specialists at the new Schusterman Center Clinic set to open June 20. Telemedicine links to the Harold Hamm Oklahoma Diabetes Center, and the OU Cancer Institute located at the OU Schusterman Center Clinic will also be initiated.”
The OU Bedlam Alliance for Community Health currently provides comprehensive primary care to the children and their families as well as the school staff and their families in 10 school-based clinics.
The College of Medicine initially projected adding five new clinic locations in 2008 but with the addition of the mobile unit, the designated areas will receive coverage without the usual start-up cost of approximately $100,000 for each new clinic.
The University of Oklahoma Schusterman Center is home to all OU programs in Tulsa including the OU College of Medicine, Tulsa. Located at 41st and Yale, the campus allows OU to provide educational, research and patient care programs for the community. The OU-Tulsa Schusterman Center currently offers four bachelor’s degree completion programs, 15 master’s programs, a doctor of medicine degree, nine residency programs in medicine and a doctor of pharmacy degree.
For more information about OU-Tulsa, call (918) 660-3000 or visit http://tulsa.ou.edu.
Updated 05-23-2007
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