Dr. Samuel Mathis, assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine, will serve a one-year term as the new physician board member.

Whether educating tomorrow’s health care work force, making groundbreaking research discoveries, or providing excellent patient care to the communities we serve, physicians at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB Health) work together to improve the health of Texas.

UTMB Health has been named to the IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals list. Specifically, UTMB ranked in the top 15 nationwide among major teaching hospitals on the list. IBM Watson Health recognizes hospitals of all sizes in five different categories – major teaching hospitals, large community hospitals, medium community hospitals and smaller community hospitals.

The Clear Lake Campus laboratory has earned its College of American Pathologists accreditation following a recent, initial inspection in which 860 regulatory standards were met and zero deficiencies were found—a rare accomplishment, especially for new labs. This recent success speaks to the lab team’s day-to-day attention to detail and commitment to ensuring all UTMB patients receive the best quality of care.

UTMB was awarded with the American Heart Association's (AHA) Gold Plus Stroke and Target Stroke Elite Plus Honor Roll. The AHA Get With The Guidelines program is a continuous quality improvement program developed with the goal to save lives by measuring hospitals' adherence to secondary prevention guidelines (pharmacological and lifestyle interventions) for coronary artery disease, heart failure and stroke. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

For the fifth year in a row, the University of Texas Medical Branch has been recognized with the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Resuscitation Gold Quality Achievement Award. This award signifies that UTMB has reached an aggressive goal in using guidelines-based care to improve outcome for patients who suffer cardiac arrests in the hospital. Guidelines include following protocols for patient safety, medical emergency team response, effective and timely resuscitation (CPR) and post-resuscitation care.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has been recognized for the third consecutive year for delivering high quality patient care, receiving a 2019 Vizient Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership Award. The award recognizes top performing comprehensive academic medical centers for demonstrating superior quality and safety performance as measured by the Vizient Quality and Accountability Study.

UTMB is now the only institution in the Greater Houston Area—and 1 of only 5 in the State of Texas—to have a Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) fully-recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). DPP providers like UTMB can help people with prediabetes prevent or delay type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems by offering evidence-based, affordable and high-quality lifestyle change programs.