The UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital is an exciting new venture for the people of South Texas. This $430 million investment will provide our region with a unique pathway to health – intricate, specialty care using innovative technologies and clinical trials not available anywhere else.
While adding 100 medical residents and fellows to our practice and 800 jobs for our city, this hospital will offer best-in-class, holistic, team-based care grounded in the latest medical research. UT Health San Antonio will bring the expertise of 1,000 faculty specialists and subspecialists to bear on every patient who enters our doors. Patient care will be coordinated within a single electronic medical record.
We are forging a future in which no patient will ever have to leave San Antonio to receive the most advanced, precision-based care that redefines medicine as it focuses on predicting, preventing and curing disease precisely.
Given our stature as the UT System’s flagship academic health center of South Texas, our unique mission blends medical education, research and patient care. Our patient-centered hospital will deliver the most advanced care possible because of our cutting-edge, internationally renowned research in complex diseases.
We will do this by taking the laboratory breakthroughs our scientists discover and translating them into effective new therapies for diseases that disproportionately affect the people of our community, including our military and senior retirees and Hispanic population.
The best example of our research into complex diseases is cancer, the economic burden of which is expected to increase by 34 percent nationally by 2030. Tragically, despite many advances, our region’s cancer burden continues to be significant. But, fortified by the university’s nationally leading physicians in oncology, our hospital’s patients will be able to receive the most advanced cancer care, including new drugs, novel cell therapies, and innovative surgical techniques and devices.
The hospital will help us respond to our region’s cancer need, as 75 percent of its beds will be devoted to cancer care. The hospital will be connected by a sky bridge to the Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson. The National Cancer Institute this year renewed its designation of the Mays Cancer Center as one of the elite cancer centers in the nation and one of only four NCI-designated Cancer Centers in Texas.
We have received tremendous community support for our hospital, and we are excited that our clinical partner of 52 years, University Health System, has agreed to join us in this endeavor. We intend for the hospital to be highly complementary to existing programs at University Hospital with no duplication of services. University Hospital will continue to be the site of delivery for many leading regional programs, including trauma surgery, organ transplantation, and women’s and children’s services.
We are grateful that The University of Texas System Board of Regents approved $80 million for the hospital. We are also appreciative of the San Antonio Medical Foundation, which donated 12.2 acres of land in the South Texas Medical Center.
In August the Board of Regents endorsed the launch of the hospital’s design and development phase. A rendering will be presented to the Board for approval in November to move forward with construction.
This important beacon of health care will take approximately three years to build and, when complete, will serve the many cancer patients of our region through new treatments and “rescue therapies.” A greater number of stellar physicians and health care professionals will meet the needs of our community in the finest research hospital in the country.
William L. Henrich, MD, MACP, is president of UT Health San Antonio. Robert A. Hromas, MD, FACP, is dean of the university’s Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.