Contact: Kenneth Billings
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State's T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability is joining with the Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto to open the university center's first satellite location.
The campus-based program and the hospital's rehabilitation department will collaborate in providing assistive technology, rehabilitation and biomedical engineering services.
"We are so excited to partner with the T.K. Martin Center," said Brad Kennedy, director of rehabilitation services at Baptist DeSoto in announcing the joint venture.
"Our mission is to provide the most comprehensive, high-quality rehabilitative services to the people of our community, and the T.K. Martin Center is a great partner for this endeavor," Kennedy said.
Baptist DeSoto will become the only Metro Memphis hospital offering this level of comprehensive rehabilitative care, he added.
Director Janie Cirlot-New said the Martin Center was created "to ensure that persons with disabilities continue to benefit from the advances in assistive technologies.
"Our partnership with Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto is an opportunity to broaden the reach of the center and improve the quality of life for more people living with disabilities," she observed.
Named for longtime MSU vice president Theodore K. Martin, the center provides comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluations to remove limitations through the application of assistive technology, allowing individuals to participate to the fullest degree in educational, vocational and leisure activities.
Among other services, the campus facility designs computer programs for persons with disabilities, provides workshops for the fabrication of specialized wheelchairs and customizes vehicles for the disabled.
Under Martin's leadership, the university in 1972 became a national leader in the effort to accommodate and assimilate students with disabilities. The 131-year-old land grant institution now enrolls more than 200 students with disabilities.
Baptist DeSoto is a 339-bed hospital offering diagnostic, surgical and rehabilitation services. In 2001, an expansion project nearly doubled its size.
The hospital's rehabilitation department includes acute care therapy services, an inpatient rehabilitation program and three outpatient clinics. The inpatient rehabilitation program has been accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities longer than any inpatient rehabilitation program in the Metro Memphis area.
The department also recently was ranked in the top 10 percent nationwide for quality by the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation.
For more on the Martin Center, visit www.tkmartin.msstate.edu/.
For more on Baptist Memorial-DeSoto, visit www.baptistonline.org/facilities/desoto/.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.