A new imaging center at OMRF will boost patient care and clinical research
At least twice a year, Marilyn Turvey makes the 210-mile round trip from Ponca City to OMRF to see her neuro-ophthalmologist, Dr. Gabriel Pardo. Separately, she travels annually from her home to Kingfisher – which is also 105 miles each way – for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan for her multiple sclerosis.
These journeys are complicated, as MS has left Turvey, 64, disabled and unable to drive. “I have to hope someone is available to take me each time,” she says.
Soon, OMRF is going to help Turvey and other patients in its clinics reduce the frequency of such trips – and consolidate their care in a single location. The foundation has launched a $7.5 million fundraising effort to build an imaging center, which will allow MS patients to undergo an MRI at the same time and place they see their specialist. The new center will also house other imaging technologies, including x-rays and optical coherence tomography, essential to caregiving in MS and other conditions that OMRF treats in its rheumatology clinic.
Two major gifts lead the effort. The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, based in Ardmore, has donated $3.5 million. Separately, in July the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation awarded a $1 million challenge grant, which requires OMRF to secure the balance within one year to receive the funds.
“What we appreciate about OMRF is that it’s a world-class research facility that actually provides patient care,”
says Mike Goeke, executive director of the Mabee Foundation. “We see outcomes at OMRF – treatments and solutions for some of our most pressing medical issues.”
The center will be named for Dr. David R. Brown, who served on the boards of both OMRF and the Noble Foundation. His son, current OMRF and Noble Foundation Director Dr. Randy Brown, said his late father would be thrilled with the project’s concept.
“My sisters and I pushed this grant within the Noble Foundation because we wanted to honor my dad and his longtime interest in OMRF,” Brown says. “For the MS patients it will serve, I’m excited that it will be in such a convenient location.”
Convenience, though, is just one benefit. “Having our own MRI would put us at the forefront of both clinical care and scientific understanding of MS,” Pardo says, explaining that MRIs have helped transform conventional wisdom about the disease.
An onsite MRI will make OMRF a more attractive candidate to host clinical trials related to neurological diseases like MS and rheumatological diseases including lupus, Sjögren’s and sarcoidosis, says Dr. Judith James, OMRF’s executive vice president and chief medical officer.
The new center will also provide another advantage: consistent results. “If you get all of your MRIs over time with the same machine in the same location and with the same technicians, you get very good longitudinal information that tells us whether your disease is getting worse,” James says.
The one-year challenge concludes in July. Construction is planned to begin around the same time. At publication, slightly more than $1.1 million remained to be raised.
To Turvey, even one less trip per year would be welcome news. Pardo has treated her disease since 1994, largely because “he offers the greatest care, and his whole staff takes on his personality. That’s what I love about this place.”
To learn more about OMRF’s new imaging center or to make a gift to help OMRF meet the Mabee challenge, go to omrf.org/Mabee.
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