Who We Are
UT Health San Antonio is the region’s leading healthcare provider, committed to academic excellence. We serve patients in San Antonio and South Texas. Our health care professionals serve in more than 100 affiliated hospitals, clinics and health care facilities across San Antonio, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley. More than 3,000 students, researchers and post-doctoral students from around the world come to the UT Health San Antonio to study, research and discover new breakthroughs.
Our Mission
To make lives better through excellence in education, research, health care and community engagement. Strategies for achieving this mission are: Educating a diverse student body to become excellent health care providers and scientists. Engaging in research to understand health and disease. Commercializing discoveries, as appropriate, to benefit the public. Providing compassionate and culturally proficient health care. Engaging our community to improve health. Influencing thoughtful advances in health policy.
Our History
Two grain silos and a hundred-acre dairy farm have been miraculously transformed over the past few decades to a Health Science Center of international renown. In 1959 Gov. Price Daniel signed House Bill 9, creating the South Texas Medical School. Six years later, the Joe J. Nix Dairy Farm, a wide expanse of grazing land, cattle pens, milking barns and silos to store cattle feed, was conveyed to the State of Texas to build a School of Medicine. On July 12, 1968, The University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio (which had been renamed in 1967) and Bexar County Teaching Hospital (now University Hospital) were dedicated.
Other schools were added in succeeding years, and in 1972 the institution name officially became The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Today, UT Health San Antonio is a vital part of San Antonio’s $37 billion health care and bioscience industry.
Today, the university graduates 200 physicians, 400 nurses, 100 dentists, 300 health professionals in other fields and 100 scientists each year. Additionally, the health science center provides a vast amount of continuing medical and dental education, affords 1.5 million patient visits each year and offers more than $8 million in uncompensated care to the medically indigent.
“UT Health is a jewel of an institution. The people that I have worked with are humble, hardworking and take great pride in the work that they do. There is a commitment to not just knowing, but also making sure that doing and execution is at the core of all activities and initiatives. The leadership is also fully committed to creating an environment that encourages collaboration and supports meritocracy. If you can conceive it and it strategically aligns with the company’s core objectives then you can do it, this is a rare reality and what makes UT Health such a special place to grow and learn.”
– Kenyatta Lee, M.D.
