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BCMS HONOREES

Manuel Quiñones Jr., MD

From young patient to experienced doctor, a medical success story

By Mike W. Thomas

In 1966, a 10-year-old boy found himself lying in a hospital bed
in San Antonio with a fractured arm and third-degree burns on his
legs. His family had been involved in a head-on collision earlier that
day while driving home from his uncle’s ranch and his mother was
also there with a fractured hip. But rather than being scared, the in-
quisitive young boy watched wide-eyed at all the things that were
going on around him that day. He was intrigued by the doctors and
nurses who were rushing about taking care of him and other pa-
tients. And out of that traumatic experience grew a lifelong love of
medicine for the young Dr. Manuel Quiñones Jr.

“My experience as a child is what led me to become a

doctor,” Quiñones says. “It was my dream from that time
on to go into medicine.”

One of the doctors who treated him that day, Dr. LeRoy Bates
Sr., would go on to practice medicine into his 80s and would even-
tually become a patient of Dr. Quiñones.
A native San Antonian, Quiñones graduated from Holy Cross
High School and went on to be the first one in his family to attend
medical school, graduating first from St. Mary’s University and then
from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. After a three-year
residency in family practice, Quiñones stayed in San Antonio and
settled down and has been ever since.
Board certified in family medicine, Dr. Quiñones has a special in-
terest in treating adult patients with hypertension, diabetes and high
cholesterol – common ailments in San Antonio and South Texas. For
years, he was in private practice, but 25 years ago he decided that the
future of medicine would require most doctors to work in groups.
“I realized that it would be almost impossible in the future for
solo doctors to survive,” he said. “The only way to maintain control
and not have to sell to a hospital organization or insurance company
was to work in groups.”
Together with Dr. Rowland Reyna and Dr. Richard Reyna,
Quiñones helped to found HealthTexas Medical Group LLC in
1994. Today, the physician-owned medical group has over 60 physi-
cian and mid-level providers working out of 16 clinics across San

32 San Antonio Medicine • May 2019