The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston is reducing its workforce by almost one-third, a move that will leave the teaching hospital with too few patient beds to accommodate its medical students’ educational needs. Reduced patient capacity, and the students’ required clinical rotations that depend on those patients, has jeopardized the medical school’s accreditation status and forced the school to send students to other medical facilities to complete this critical step in the medical educational process.
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The University of Texas (UT) board of regents voted on Wednesday to reduce the facility’s workforce by 3,800 jobs and to reduce capacity at the medical school’s John Sealy Hospital from 550 patient beds to only 200. Laid-off employees can expect to be paid through mid-January.
Since Hurricane Ike swept Galveston Island in September, the facility has lost as much as $40 million per month and has sent students in their third and fourth years of medical school to other facilities in Texas where they could gain the clinical experience required for advancement. UTMB officials and administrators from hospitals in nearby Clear Lake and Houston are negotiating more permanent arrangements for UTMB students to gain clinical rotation requirements at these, off-campus facilities.
Though there is concern the reputation of the facility will suffer as a result of the workforce reduction and off-campus clinical rotations for students, UTMB officials look to Tulane University’s experiences since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005. In the immediate aftermath, Tulane’s medical school moved to the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where it remained in operation for about a year. Now fully operational back in New Orleans, medical school applications are plentiful and class size has been increased by 15 students to meet demand.
