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| University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston: Stops for No Storm |
| Featured Spotlights | |||
| Written by Meghan Flynn | |||
| Saturday, 01 August 2009 | |||
 The worst hurricane to hit Texas in a century has only temporarily slowed the growth at this academic health center, one of the largest and oldest west of the Mississippi.
 David Callender, president UTMB is an academic health science center that includes more than 70 major buildings, teaches more than 2,500 students, and employs more than 1,000 faculty members and 10,000 employees. Its 84-acre campus includes four schools, three institutes for advanced study, a major medical library, a health system that provides a full range of primary and specialized medical care, and state-of-the-art research facilities. One is Galveston National Laboratory, the only national laboratory in the state and one of only two in the US focused on the safe study of deadly infectious diseases. Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast on September 12 last year, flooding nearly all points on Galveston Island and damaging 75% of the housing on the 27-mile-long barrier island that is home to nearly 60,000 people. UTMB suffered nearly $1 billion in damages, which Callender said were mostly caused by the storm surge. “We lost critical patient care functions such as the pharmacy, blood bank, and kitchen in our main inpatient facility, John Sealy Hospital. We also lost most of our classroom space and our top-ranked emergency department and Level I trauma center,” said Callender. “For UTMB, the current economic situation is dwarfed by the financial and operational challenges we’ve overcome so far and those that remain ahead of us as a result of Hurricane Ike,” he added. He said the lowest point in the long road back from the storm was late November of last year, when the school had to notify approximately 2,500 employees that their jobs would be eliminated in January. Many had worked in clinical departments that had been severely damaged and were being paid even though there was no work for them to do. Another one of the biggest challenges UTMB has coped with has been its longstanding tradition of providing care to uninsured patients as well as tertiary and quaternary care to all. The island, the city of Galveston, and the state have come to rely on these services. The growing number of unsponsored patients in an era of rising costs and shrinking third-party reimbursements for care forced UTMB to limit the amount of such care; with hurricane-damaged facilities and no emergency room, UTMB had to dramatically reduce it overnight. The result was an influx of unsponsored patients to other hospitals around the state that hadn’t planned on the volume. The closure of UTMB’s emergency department also strained regional trauma resources; the university could function only as an urgent care facility, and patients with severe illness or injury had to be transported to other hospitals in the Houston/Galveston area. “Hurricane Ike brought into sharp focus the important role UTMB plays in the healthcare infrastructure in Texas. There was a point when we thought our cash would dry up completely, and I’m not sure what would have happened to our region and our state if UTMB had shut its doors,” Callender said. But he is optimistic about the future, and has good reason to be. Classes in UTMB’s schools of medicine, nursing, health professions, and graduate biomedical sciences all were back in session within six weeks of the storm. Advance preparations had preserved much of the university’s research material, and most of the outpatient clinics on the mainland were operational two days after the storm. In July, UTMB moved its temporary kitchen from a tent atop a parking garage (where it has served employee and patient meals since a few days after the storm) to a fully enclosed facility. And it’s a good thing too: the university is putting more hospital beds in service. The ED will reopen on August 1 as a Level III trauma center and provide a full range of clinical services; it will lack the outreach and research components necessary for Level I designation, though Callender hopes to have it back up to that certification in 2010. The next step is to retrofit the university facilities to withstand the hurricanes of the future. An engineering study is complete and the plans are approved by FEMA; he said the project should take about five years. He highlighted the role local, state, and federal elected officials played in helping secure funding for UTMB. And he said the island and broader Galveston community came together in support of the institution. UTMB employs 8,500 of the 24,000 jobs on the island, and is a major economic engine for the region, with a combined direct and indirect economic impact of more than $500 million for the Houston/Galveston area and more than $1 billion for the state. “Ike was one of those once-in-a-century storms, and we never want to experience anything like the damage we’ve been coping with,” Callender said. “Luckily, we have a team of survivors that has worked unbelievably hard to get things back to normal quickly and that is ready to take the university to new heights.” The road ahead For Callender and his team, that means continuing the university’s long history of “firsts” in the health sciences field. “We couldn’t have survived the devastation of Hurricane Ike without the support of our community and the state, and we plan to work hard so as not to disappoint them,” he said. UTMB’s Galveston National Laboratory is where a lot of the action is. The university competed with others across the country for funding to construct the specialized facility. The laboratory, coupled with UTMB’s long-standing reputation for excellence in the field of infectious diseases research, continues to attract researchers from around the world, many of whom are involved in investigating the recent outbreak of H1N1 in Mexico. Callender said most of the work in infectious disease is taking place at the molecular level, where scientists are looking for ways to diagnose, treat, and prevent such diseases. This work may also have implications in a number of chronic conditions for which therapeutic vaccines are in development. Since the storm, researchers at UTMB have generated nearly $104 million in additional funding, including $10.9 million for a clinical proteomics center for infectious diseases and bio-defense. More recently, UTMB has launched the Institute for Translational Sciences with the goal to broadly enhance the scope and conduct of translational research at UTMB and its neighboring institutions. In July, the NIH announced that UTMB would receive a five-year, $21.5 million Clinical Translational Science Award to fund a new initiative aimed at accelerating the translation of basic science discoveries into clinically useful knowledge and treatments. According to the institute’s director, Dr. Allan Brasier, “It's so important to get new translational research and new investigational teams up and running, and the CTSA will fund processes and core facilities that will be crucial to stimulating that development.” On the clinical front, UTMB will open a specialty care center in early 2010; Callender said the construction should be complete in December. The 110,000-square-foot center will have outpatient ORs, state-of-the-art imaging equipment, and exam rooms to complement the resources of the 20 or so UTMB mainland outpatient clinics in the League City area, as well as serve as a resource for private physicians in this rapidly growing region. Callender explained that physicians whose patients needed the level of specialty care found at UTMB used to only be able to refer patients to clinics and hospitals on Galveston Island, which is out of the way for most in the Galveston/ Houston area. The new facility will provide many of the same specialty services at a more convenient location. There is a long road ahead, but things are certainly looking up for Callender and UTMB. “We are carefully managing our resources and taking it one day at a time,” he said. “Hurricane Ike interrupted our plans, but we are determined not to let it hinder our progress.” |
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