TTUHSC showcases achievements to Regents
Feb. 24—From drones delivering medical supplies to partnerships with local hospitals and growing their own, Texas Tech University of Board Regents got a sampling of what the Health Sciences Center in Odessa has been up to during a Friday meeting.
The meeting, which began Thursday, was held in the Academic Classroom Building in the J'Nevelyn and Larry Melton Conference Center.
Regional Dean Dr. Timothy Benton said there are 158 residents and fellows currently training in the Permian Basin. That is in the specialties of OB-GYN, internal medicine and psychiatry.
New in 2022 was a surgery residency program that also includes fellowships in childhood and adolescent psychiatry and endocrinology, for example.
"This year, we were approved for a cardiology fellowship. We'll start in July 2023. We have applications in for pulmonary and critical care fellowships, hopefully to also begin in July," Benton said.
Texas Tech Health Sciences family medicine program spans eight counties in the Permian Basin and currently has 70 residents. The rural sites are in six counties including Southeastern New Mexico.
"The rural program began in 2014 and since its inception ... Over eight years, we have 15 graduates from the program and seven have stayed in rural practice," Benton said.
"Those residents over that time period in the rural Permian Basin have seen 15,000 clinic patients, so just by having the program has increased access to care in our region," he added. "This was an even bigger vision to address health system issues and population health within our region, not only creating workforce, but we are expanding within that physical network to do additional things to learn more about our region and advance healthcare meeting the mission of TTUHSC And in particular the vision of Dr. Rice-Spearman of transforming healthcare."
Dr. Lori Rice-Spearman is the president of TTUHSC.
As part of that, TTUHSC provides Medicine on the Move, which provides access to care, education and telemedicine.
In answer to a question from a regent, Rice-Spearman said for all of the graduates from this region, which include physical therapy, nursing and medicine, their overall placement rate in the region is 75 percent.
They also showed a video on its partnership with the clinic in Marathon to provide telemedicine. Benton said they also got a $3.4 million Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant in partnership with their physician assistant school. That amount is over five years and it designated them as a Hispanic Center of Excellence.
"We are working within the junior high schools and high schools in Region 18, as well as networking universities in the Permian Basin to create that pipeline," Benton said.
He added that it helps supplement their education.
Dr. Phil Sizer, associate vice president for Research Innovation, talked about ways TTUHSC is increasing rural health care and telehealth support. They have started a drone program that can transport all manner things from flu shots to organs.
Also on hand were Medical Center Hospital President/CEO Russell Tippin; Midland Memorial Hospital President Russell Meyers; Tracee Bentley, President/CEO of Permian Strategic Partnership; and Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa.
"We were founded in 2018 with 20 of the larger oil and gas companies at the time who said we have big, big plans for the Permian Basin — 40-50 years and beyond," Bentley said.
"In order to achieve what they wanted to achieve we've got to have a workforce to be able to do it and so they did an assessment of the region," Bentley said.
They couldn't do everything, so they decided to focus their education, healthcare, infrastructure and workforce development. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center was one of their first partners in healthcare.
"We have directly invested just in healthcare alone $53 million and $22 (million) of that is in Texas Tech Health Sciences Center," Bentley said.
She listed the physician assistant program, surgery, subspecialties and Medicine on the Move as some of PSP's investments.
This marks the second time a regularly scheduled Board of Regents meeting has been held in Odessa and the first since 2002. The board's first meeting at a non-Lubbock campus was in the Permian Basin in Midland in 1999.
Total, the board has held three regularly scheduled meetings at TTUHSC campus locations the past 10 years, including 2013 (Abilene), 2020 (Amarillo) and now Odessa.
