OSU Health Sciences Center and State Medical Examiner’s Office Dedicate New Shared Facility | Education

“It’s fabulous,” said Dr. Dennis Blankenship, interim dean of the school. “As we’ve grown over the years, that growth has been incredible, but it’s made us feel a bit cramped, with a lot of our facilities a bit dated as well. This solves a lot of that, and it’s just a beautiful, beautiful building”.

Officials said the final cost of the project is not yet known, but it is expected to be significantly less than the $62 million budgeted.

The Office of the Medical Examiner contributed $22 million to the total.

The office, which has moved from its previous site on campus, occupies parts of the first and second floors.

It has almost three times the space it had before, authorities said.

“We’ve been talking about this for years,” said Dr. Josh Lanter, deputy chief medical examiner. “It’s one of those moments that we’ve always waited for, but it turned out even better than we expected.”

He said the office, which serves 25 counties, has seen its caseload rise substantially in recent years.

“This will help us a lot with response time,” Lanter said. “Now we can hire new people for the staff and we are already in the process of doing so: more doctors, more administrative staff, more route technicians.”

The new facility expands the number of autopsy tables from two to eight.

“We currently have six doctors and now we can all work at the same time,” Lanter said.

“This building is built for 20 or 30 years ahead, so it allows us to continue growing,” he added.

Blankenship said one of the highlights for OSU officials is the new anatomy lab.

“It’s a completely different level than we had before,” he said.

The lab, which is used by OSU’s medical, physician assistant, and athletic training students, accommodates many more students than the old lab and has dedicated space for review and study.

The cold room is twice the size of the previous one and Neuroanatomy has its own laboratory in the new facilities.

The last floor of the building is dedicated mainly to the administration. It includes the offices of the president, provost, administrative offices, the Research Office, and the executive boardroom.

“New facilities like this help us attract and educate the best and brightest students in the state,” said Dr. Johnny Stephens, president of the OSU Health Sciences Center. “As we celebrate 50 years of our College of Osteopathic Medicine on our campus, we look forward to continuing our mission of educating primary care physicians in rural and underserved areas of Oklahoma.”