New UPHS Diabetes Center opens doors
The Rodebaugh Diabetes Center, a clinical branch of the Health System's Diabetes Department that specializes in patient treatment as well as prevention and education, celebrated its opening Wednesday.
The new facility, located in Penn Tower, is staffed by both full- and part-time physicians and clinicians as well as a nurse practitioner, diabetes educator, nutritionist and a podiatrist. It also includes a small clinical laboratory for conducting diabetes-related research.
"Our mission has three parts," said Mitchell Lazar, Medical School professor and medical director of the center. "To take care of these patients and give them state-of-the-art therapy, but [also] to come up with the next therapies, and also to teach the next generation."
"We're going to need a lot more diabetes physicians, and this is a better place to be trained for that," Lazar added, noting that 18 million Americans currently suffer from diabetes.
Although the center's opening event took place Wednesday, renovations to the facility were actually completed ahead of schedule in August.
Previously, clinical diabetes treatment operated within the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, on the third floor of the complex, Lazar said. He added that the new facility -- which was funded through a donation by the late Grace Rodebaugh -- is a vast improvement over the previous one and allows for expanded treatment and education options.
"I've been here 15 years and in those times, our places that we saw diabetic patients were really not ideal," Lazar said. "They were cramped, they were not modern."
"We were able to really design a space that we believe is not only attractive, but is highly functional," Lazar said, calling the new clinic "the nicest as well as the most appropriate places for treating diabetes in the Delaware Valley."
-- Rachel Velcoff
