The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is a public academic health science center in Galveston, Texas, United States. It is part of the University of Texas System. UTMB includes the oldest medical school in Texas,[5] and has about 11,000 employees.[6] As of April 2024, it had an endowment of $763 million.[7]
Established in 1891 as the University of Texas Medical Department, UTMB has grown from one building, 23 students and 13 faculty members to more than 70 buildings, more than 2,500 students and more than 1,000 faculty.[8] It has five schools (Medicine, Nursing, Health Professions, Public and Population Health, and Graduate Biomedical Sciences), three institutes for advanced study, a comprehensive medical library, four on-site hospitals (including an affiliated Shriners Hospital for Children), a network of clinics that provide primary and specialized medical care and numerous research facilities.
UTMB's primary missions are health sciences education, medical research (it is home to the Galveston National Laboratory) and health care services.[9] Its emergency department at John Sealy Hospital is certified as a Level I Trauma Center and serves as the lead trauma facility for a nine-county region in Southeast Texas; it is one of only three Level I Trauma centers serving all ages in Southeast Texas.[10]
The location of the Medical Department of the University of Texas was decided between Galveston and Houston in a popular vote in 1881, but its opening was delayed due to the construction of the main university campus in Austin, Texas. The need for medical training in Texas was great: in 1891, 80 percent of doctors in the state had under a year of formal training in medicine, and so the "Texas Medical College" was formed in Galveston with the idea that it would become the medical department once state funding began.[citation needed]
The original building, the Ashbel Smith Building also called Old Red, was begun in 1890 under the supervision of the Galveston architect Nicholas J. Clayton. Clayton toured several medical colleges in the North and East before drawing up his plans for the building. The medical school campus also included the John Sealy Hospital, which provided charity care for any who claimed Galveston residence.
Upon opening, the Red Building had been starkly underfurnished, a problem which was not fully remedied until after the Hurricane of 1900, when the state rallied around the ravaged city. Dr. Thompson, professor of surgery, said that "the regents were so generous in repairing the damage to the building and restoring the equipment, that we were actually in better shape at the end of the year 1901 than we had been before." In addition, the damage to the roof of Old Red allowed for the addition of skylights, which had always been wanted for the dissection room. Also in 1901, the school admitted their first woman faculty member, Marie Charlotte Schaefer.[11]
In 1915 the medical branch built the first hospital dedicated to children in Texas. By 1924 UTMB had established the first department of pediatrics in the state of Texas – which was also one of the first departments of pediatrics in the United States.[12]
UTMB's annual budget of approximately $1.4 billion includes grants, awards, and contracts from federal and private sources totaling more than $150 million, in addition to institutional allocations for research.[citation needed]
Construction on an emergency department began in 1989, and the Sealy & Smith Foundation spent $28 million to have it built.[13]
In 1996, UTMB purchased the adjacent 128-year-old St. Mary's Hospital, the first catholic hospital in Texas.[14] The building was converted into the Rebecca Sealy Psychiatric Hospital.
Hurricane Ike (2008) caused significant flood damage to nearly every building on campus, including the John Sealy Hospital. However, UTMB has about $1.4 billion to restore, harden and expand its campus. Much of the money was approved by the 81st Texas Legislative session, $450 million comes from FEMA, $130 million from insurance, $200 million from the Sealy and Smith Foundation, and $50 million from the Social Service Block Grant Funds. Reconstruction is actively underway as well as hardening of the campus to protect buildings and resources from future storms. UTMB restored its educational programs within weeks after the Hurricane Ike and the research endeavor came back steadily thereafter. In 2011 the foundation committed $170 million towards the construction of a new Jennie Sealy Hospital on the UTMB campus, an amount that represents the largest single gift ever to a Texas health institution.[15]
In 2003 UTMB received funding to construct a $150 million Galveston National Biocontainment Laboratory on its campus, one of the few non-military facilities of this level. It houses several Biosafety Level 4 research laboratories, where studies on highly infectious materials can be carried out safely.[16] It has schools of medicine, nursing, allied health professions, and a graduate school of biomedical sciences, as well as an institute for medical humanities. UTMB also has a major contract with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to provide medical care to inmates at all TDC sites in the eastern and southern portions of Texas. UTMB also has similar contracts with local governments needing inmate medical care.
In fiscal year 2012, UTMB received 20 percent of its $1.5 billion budget from the State of Texas to help support its teaching mission, hospital operation and Level 1 Trauma Center; UTMB generates the rest of its budget through its research endeavors, clinical services and philanthropy. It provides a significant amount of charity care (almost $96 million in 2012), and treats complex cases such as transplants and burns.[17]
UTMB became a member of the Houston-based Texas Medical Center in 2010.[18]
On March 10, 2022, UTMB announced that the School of Medicine would be renamed to the John Sealy School of Medicine in honor of the over $1 billion donated to the university and medical school by the Sealy family and the Sealy & Smith Foundation over the last century.[19]
UTMB includes five schools:
From its modest beginnings in the 1890s as the first state medical school in Texas, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has developed into a large, sophisticated health science complex with numerous schools and institutes, including:
UTMB operates an extensive clinical care enterprise with a wide variety of specialty programs.[citation needed]
UTMB has two heliports: the Ewing Hall Heliport (FAA LID: 9TS7) and the Emergency Department Heliport (FAA LID: 9TA7).
