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UTHSCSA

The value of an academic

medical center

A conversation with William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP,

President and Professor of Medicine, UT Health San Antonio

Q. What exactly is an Taken together, we represent a substantial investment in San An-
academic medical center? tonio’s bioscience and educational future. Without UT Health San
Academic medical centers, including Antonio, the city and region would have a much more difficult, if not
UT Health San Antonio, play a central impossible, time plotting a way forward in medicine and the bio-
and vital role in the health and well-being sciences.
of our nation. Like other academic cen-
ters, UT Health San Antonio trains the Q. What do such centers mean for health care
doctors, nurses, dentists and other health and for patients?
care professionals of the future. Addi- Without UT Health San Antonio, there wouldn’t be a steady
tionally and critically, we also are a thriv- supply of doctors, dentists, nurses and health professions care-
ing scientific research enterprise that givers in San Antonio or the region. The shortage of providers
simultaneously delivers leading-edge patient care to thousands of our would be devastating.
fellow community members. As for patient care, we have affiliation agreements with our primary
Our missions are complementary and embedded in all we do. partner, the Bexar County Hospital District. University Hospital is
The unique feature of an academic medical center is that three our primary teaching hospital. There we treat many of the most badly
missions — patient care, research and education — guide and injured patients in its Level 1 Trauma Center and the most complex
shape its existence. illnesses in every area of hospital medicine.
And in our physicians practice, we have over 100 subspecialties in
Q. What do such centers mean for a medicine providing care for thousands. We now have multiple loca-
local economy? tions around the city in which to deliver that service. We’re taking pri-
The financial benefit of a center such as UT Health San Antonio mary care to where people live.
to the local community is enormous. We are the hub of the bioscience This is unique to an academic medical center. You can’t separate
economy, now surpassing $40 billion in San Antonio. We collaborate our teaching function from our patient care or from our scientific re-
with multiple organizations in the community to make bioscience ef- search. They all feed off each other and, together, benefit the indi-
forts successful. We have partnerships with The University of Texas vidual patient, the community and society.
at San Antonio, Southwest Research Institute and Texas Biomedical
Research Institute. We share grants. We have a long-standing, robust Q. What are some of the obstacles you face?
and growing relationship with military medicine in San Antonio. State-supported academic medical centers such as UT Health San
Moreover, at UT Health San Antonio, there are a number of com- Antonio face very specific challenges. Because state support has de-
mercial spinoffs each year that come from bioscience endeavors, and clined over the years, we now depend on our clinical practice to sub-
we now have around $240 million in sponsored programs in research. sidize education and research. Without the clinical mission, we would
These spinoffs and sponsored programs invariably lead to more in- not be able to have the robust research capabilities we have nor deliver
vestments in support structure. So every $1 in federal support we re- a first-class education to our students, which we do every day.
ceive is translated into about $7 in community benefits. UT Health A related challenge is offering a compelling case to society that ed-
San Antonio is an accelerator of financial growth for the city. ucation is the future of the country. Whoever owns the knowledge
32 San Antonio Medicine • March 2019