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The Robert B. Green Memorial
Hospital opens it's doors to serve as a charity
and teaching hospital in 1917.
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The Bexar County Hospital District, doing business as University Health System, is a political subdivision of the state of Texas. The legal entity was created in 1955 to provide medical care to the indigent of Bexar County.
University Health System’s origins date back to 1916 when the city of San
Antonio and the county of Bexar jointly sponsored the Robert B. Green Memorial
Hospital to provide medical services to the community’s indigent.
Today, it is the third largest public health system in the state of Texas and one of the largest employers in Bexar County with over 5,000 employees,
nearly 700 resident physicians, and an operating budget of $848 million for 2009.
University Hospital operates about 400 acute care and specialty
beds and serves as the lead Level I trauma center for a 22-county
area of South/Central Texas. University Health System’s outpatient
and facilities provide primary care and specialty outpatient care
throughout Bexar County.
The University Health Center–Downtown, formerly the Robert B.
Green Memorial Hospital, is the community’s largest and most
comprehensive outpatient care facility, providing both primary and
specialty services.
The University Center for Community Health, home to
the renowned Texas Diabetes Institute, opened in 1999.
It is the largest center in the nation devoted to research,
prevention and treatment of diabetes.
The outpatient network also includes four neighborhood
primary care clinics (University Family Health Centers–
Southeast, Southwest, North and Northwest), nine
preventive health clinics and three kidney dialysis
centers. Additionally, University Health System provides
medical services at Bexar County’s adult and juvenile
correctional facilities.
University Health System has a long-standing affiliation with the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, and its clinical locations serve
as major teaching sites for the school’s graduate medical education program.
Membership on the medical-dental staff of the University Health System is
extended exclusively to faculty physicians of the UT Health Science Center.
San Antonio AirLife, jointly owned by
University Health System and Baptist Health
System, began operating on January 1, 1991.
Since its inception, AirLife has provided safe and rapid transports to over 35,000 critically ill and injured patients. For the third time, AirLife was named Texas Air Medical Transport Service of the Year in 2008. AirLife was honored as the National First Responder of the Year by the American Trauma Society in 2001.
Community First Health Plans, Inc. (CFHP), the region’s only locally-owned and operated, not-for-profit HMO, was established in 1995 by the University Health System to begin providing healthcare coverage to the citizens of Bexar and the surrounding seven counties. Today, CFHP has more than 110,000 members and is a fully mature health plan with a strong balance between commercial and government-sponsored programs.
In response to a growing uninsured population, University Health System established the CareLink program in 1996. CareLink is a membership program for Bexar County residents who do not have access to health insurance and who do not quailify for Medicaid or Medicare. Members must provide proof of residency and meet income eligibility requirements. Members pay co-pays for medications and services based on their family size and income.
To increase primary care services, University Health System created Community Medicine Associates (CMA), a non-profit physician practice, in 1999 for the purpose of providing primary care physician services at University family health centers. With a customer-centered approach, CMA provides extended service hours, seven days a week, at University Health System’s ExpressMed Clinics located at the hospital and four clinic locations.
In 2000, University Health System joined with Bexar County to sponsor the Center for Health Care Services (CHCS), the community’s mental health and mental retardation authority. CHCS provides a comprehensive array of mental health, mental retardation, and drug and alcohol abuse services throughout Bexar County.
University Health System is one of 12 hospitals in the U.S. with the highest level of health information techonology (HIT) development, according to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). The HIMSS study included 5,084 hospitals and ranked each facility’s HIT development on a scale of zero to seven. No hospitals had yet achieved Stage 7 integration, and only 12 were found to be at Stage 6. University Health System is extremely close to meeting the requirements for Stage 7. University Health System’s success in going “digital” with the roll-out and integration of key technologies like an electronic medical record resulted in University being named one of the the 100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems in the U.S. by the American Hospital Association and Hospitals & Health Networks Magazine in 2008. It is the only hospital in San Antonio to receive this recognition.
University Health System’s President/CEO and Chief Information Officer were recipients of the 2008 Transformational Leadership Award, by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the American Hospital Association . This award is given to the one healthcare organization in the nation determined to have successfully undergone a large scale transformation
As a result of University Health System’s transformational change to go “paperless,” nearly 100 percent of patient orders are now being processed electronically. That adds up to about 5.5 million patient care orders and 11 million other electronic documents in 2008 alone.
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