Welcome to the division of rheumatology at Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) at Old Dominion University. Our new academic division was established in 2023. Our providers are dedicated to delivering superior evidence-based medicine, educating non-rheumatology health care providers in all aspects of our specialty and optimizing patient care in our community and region.
Who We Are
We are the primary rheumatology referral center for Medicaid, Medicare and Veteran Administration patients in Hampton Roads, and are increasingly becoming the primary referral center for privately insured patients from Virginia and northern North Carolina whose physicians request timely assistance treating patients with rheumatic diseases.
EVMS provides care for those reaching 18 years of age who previously received services at the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters, allowing us to transition patients with childhood rheumatic diseases. Moreover, we are the only rheumatologists who consult on patients admitted to Sentara Healthcare’s flagship hospital, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
Providing patient care, education, and clinical research for patients with inflammatory arthritis and other connective tissue disorders.
Established in 2023, Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion Rheumatology is proud to represent one of the newest academic specialties at EVMS Department of Medicine. From its inception, the division has been committed to advancing the science and practice of rheumatology through excellence in clinical care, education, and research.
Our faculty and clinicians are dedicated to delivering state-of-the-art, evidence-based care to patients across the Hampton Roads region and beyond. We serve as the primary referral center for patients with public and private insurance-including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration-who require timely, specialized evaluation and management of complex rheumatic diseases.
As the only rheumatology consult service at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, the region's tertiary care center, we care for hospitalized patients with serious autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. We also play a critical role in the transition of care for young adults with childhood-onset rheumatic conditions as they move from pediatric to adult services, in close partnership with Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.
At the Division of Rheumatology, we combine clinical precision with compassionate care - treating not just the disease, but the person behind it. Our commitment is to help each patient live a healthier, more functional life through early diagnosis, targeted therapy, and continuous collaboration.
Our Goals
- Provide state-of-the-art, evidence-based patient care in a cost-effective, efficient manner.
- Deliver unequaled rheumatology education for medical students and residents.
- Serve as positive role models for medical students and residents thus attracting them to careers in rheumatology.
- Enable non-rheumatologists to recognize rheumatic disorders and provide them with the clinical skills to optimize the care of their patients.
- Foster critical thinking that advances the understanding and treatment of rheumatic diseases and stimulates the exchange of ideas intra and extramurally.
We strive to become a true academic division with future goals of adding a rheumatology training program and enhancing rheumatology knowledge through the development of a vigorous research program consisting of investigator-initiated projects, collaborations with other basic and clinical scientists and innovative therapy trials.
Our Services
- Comprehensive diagnostic evaluations
- Joint and soft tissue aspirations and injections
- Joint fluid examination under polarizing microscopy
- Biologic, immunosuppressive and osteoporosis therapies
Conditions We Treat Include:
- Gout/pseudogout
- Inflammatory myopathy (polymyositis and dermatomyositis)
- Osteoarthritis
- Osteopenia/osteoporosis
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Scleroderma
- Sjogren’s syndrome
- Spondyloarthropathies (ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease arthritis and ulcerative colitis arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, reactive arthritis)
- Systemic lupus erythematosus
- Vasculitis
While chronic pain syndromes and genetic connective tissue disorders such as fibromyalgia and Ehler-Danlos syndrome are neither immunologic nor autoimmune, we evaluate these patients for underlying medical conditions which could contribute to their symptoms and provide treatment recommendations to their primary care providers.
We collaborate with many other specialties to optimize the care of non-rheumatologic patients by providing expertise with immunomodulators and immunosuppressants. These include but are not limited to ophthalmologists treating patients with inflammatory eye disease (including sarcoidosis), otolaryngologists with patients with autoimmune hearing loss, pulmonary providers with patients with interstitial lung disease and cardiologists caring for patients with pericarditis.
Because many of our patients have rheumatologic diseases which affect multiple organ systems, we partner with other specialists to optimize the care of our patients in a multidisciplinary fashion.
