DHR Health last week announced it was ending its affiliation with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine in which the medical services institution served as a teaching site for UTRGV residents and fellows.
DHR currently supports 135 university students and says it will continue to do so until they graduate out of their educational programs.
It’s unknown what might have prompted the agreement’s dissolution, but it appears the separation is amicable. Officials at the medical school say the development is part of the “natural evolution” of the school.
That evolution suggests the Valley eventually could have a facility like those already seen at other medical schools: a proprietary, full-service teaching hospital operated by the university itself rather than an affiliated private entity. San Antonio’s UniversityHospital, the SouthwesternMedicalCenter in Dallas and BaylorUniversityMedicalCenter are just some well-known examples of such facilities within this state. UTRGV already has opened clinics throughout the Valley, ranging from primary and emergency care centers to those specializing in women’s health and neuroscience. It also operates UniMovil, a mobile clinic that takes medical services to rural and outlying areas; it has been dispatched as far away as Houston to address the needs of hurricane victims in that area.
University hospitals, such as Duke and Johns Hopkins, have earned a reputation for providing some of the highest-level and innovative medicine in the country, utilizing the universities’ own faculty-level doctors and research resources to bring cutting-edge medical care to their communities — and to patients across the country who need the specialized care they can provide.
If such a dedicated, university-owned facility lies in the future of South Texas, then it appears to be a promising future indeed.
The university last week broke ground on a $145 million cancer and surgery center in McAllen.
In that vein, DHR Health, which initially began its own growth process as DoctorsHospital at Renaissance, has been invaluable in offering a clinical setting for student teaching, as well as the internship and fellowship positions it has provided over the past eight years. We can assume that despite the dissolution of its formal teaching agreement with the university, DHR will continue to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the UTRGVMedicalSchool, providing internship and staff positions to UTRGV students and graduates while benefiting from the ready supply of medical professionals the university has to offer.
There’s no denying that the DHR Health, in addition to assistance from Valley cities and counties, provided the community support that was vital to helping the medical school thrive in its critical first years in existence. The association between the two institutions surely helped DHR grow to become one of the nation’s largest private, physician-owned healthcare systems.
Together they have helped create new educational and professional opportunities to many Valley students, while improving the level and availability of healthcare services to local residents.
