Dr. Mark Pippenger, director of the Walker Memory Center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, will depart the clinic for a new position in Charlotte, N.C., he confirmed at a luncheon Tuesday.
Pippenger, a UAMS associate professor and behavioral neurologist, is leaving to found and lead a similar memory clinic at a large North Carolina-based health system. His scheduled start date there is Feb. 1, he said.
Dr. Jeanne Wei, chair of the UAMS geriatrics department and director of the Institute on Aging, said geriatricians at the campus have offered to step in to see patients at the clinic, which the hospital plans to keep going.
"We want to be able to meet the needs of our mature Arkansans," she said.
UAMS also will work to recruit one or possibly more than one physician to fill the role vacated by Pippenger, who Wei said had worked with the organization for roughly five or six years.
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"It's always unfortunate when someone who you like, and who you appreciate, has found a better position and a better offer," she said. "We're going to miss him, and we're going to do the best we can in the meantime."
Geriatricians are pitching in because they learn about memory care as part of their training. Specialists in that discipline run the vast majority of memory centers in the United States, Wei said.
A $5 million gift to the university created the Walker Memory Center in 2005, according to information available on the UAMS website. Patients seen there include people with Alzheimer's disease and different types of dementia, such as vascular dementia, which is generally caused by stroke.
Through the Thomas and Lyon Longevity Clinic, the Institute on Aging sees about 25,000 visits a year by patients whose median age is 86, Wei said. Doctors there look not only at conditions that are associated with age, such as falls, but also at issues facing healthy seniors.
There is at least one other clinic addressing memory concerns in Arkansas. It's located at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville.
Metro on 01/09/2019