Harlingen to Receive $10 Million Teaching Hospital

 AUSTIN -- The University of Texas System regents voted Thursday to make a $30 million investment in science and health education in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, laying the groundwork for a future medical school in the region.

In what some officials call a “game-changer” for the underserved Valley, UT will spend $10 million to build a simulation teaching hospital in Harlingen and $9.5 million to recruit teaching and research faculty in science, technology, engineering and math at UT System institutions throughout South Texas.

About $2.5 million will go toward boosting the number of medical residency slots and building a base of philanthropy, both crucial to the eventual creation of a medical school.

To strengthen the pipeline of future doctors and health professionals, officials included $4 million for UT-Pan American in Edinburg and UT-Brownsville to implement UTeach, a teacher training program that turns out qualified science and math teachers for K-12 schools. To boost research, UT will invest $4 million in a biomedical research program, a joint endeavor among all UT institutions in the region.

“We believe this to be a transformational investment,” said Francisco Cigarroa, chancellor of the UT System. “What I love about this plan is it will have an impact on classrooms from K-12 all the way up to the doctorate level in higher education.”

The Rio Grande Valley is a fast-growing and chronically underserved region. According to the Texas Medical Association, Valley counties averaged 104 doctors per 100,000 residents, half the national ratio of 209. There is also a shortage of nurses, pharmacists and other health-care workers.

In 2002, UT opened the Regional Academic Health Center, or RAHC, which consists of a research center in Edinburg and a clinical facility in Harlingen, both operated by the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. There is also a public health clinic in Brownsville run by the UT Health Science Center at Houston.

San Antonio's health science center opened a branch campus in Laredo in 2002, which offers degrees in physician assistant studies, dietetics and nutrition and respiratory care.

In 2009, lawmakers passed a bill authorizing UT to convert the RAHC into a medical school by around 2016.

William Henrich, president of San Antonio's health science center, said the plan is to piggyback on the existing medical school, expanding San Antonio's incoming class and sending more students to the RAHC for third- and fourth-year rotations.

Eventually, the RAHC will transform into a comprehensive health science center.

The simulation hospital in Harlingen will provide a 15,000-square-foot training facility stocked with sophisticated mannequins that prepare students to deal with a variety of situations before taking on real life patients. The hospital will be available to students across South Texas in various allied health fields.

Valley hospitals have committed to fund 127 residency slots, up from the 30 currently in place. UT will begin recruiting faculty to teach and do research in diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other areas ripe for investigation in the region.

“We know exactly which hoops we have to jump through to make it happen,” Henrich said. “It is all tightly choreographed.”

What's uncertain is whether the state will carve out a new stream of money to operate the school, said Kenneth Shine, vice chancellor for health affairs at the UT System. Running a medical school costs aro m $40 to $50 million per year, a pricey prospect in a climate of cutbacks, Shine said.

The first step of expanding San Antonio's medical class requires a $55 million teaching and learning center in San Antonio, Henrich said. This session, state lawmakers failed to pass tuition revenue bonds that would have funded the project.

“This could all turn around with the economy turning around. We just don't know,” Henrich said.

In the meantime, UT's $30 investment will have a huge impact on the region, paving the way for health education in the Valley that is modern and forward-thinking, Shine said.

“You want to skate where the puck is going to be,” Shine said. “We want to be where healthcare is going, rather than simply recreating the old models.”