UTMB was named a recipient of the 2024 MAP Award for High Performance in Revenue Cycle, sponsored by the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Becker’s reports that “the MAP Award recognizes providers that have excelled in meeting industry standard revenue cycle benchmarks, implemented best practices embodied in HFMA's Healthcare Dollars & Sense initiatives, focused their efforts on improving price transparency, and achieved outstanding patient satisfaction.”
UTMB President Dr. Jochen Reiser spoke to Becker’s about artificial intelligence in health care. “This is clearly with enormous potential, not only for diagnostics but also for operational use, ultimately creating more time for doctors and providers to do what they love to do which is to spend time with the patients,” Reiser told Becker’s.
Have you ever heard of a cancer that could be eliminated by vaccination, ask Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in their Medical Discovery News column. Human papilloma viruses (HPV) cause 90 percent of cervical cancers, and there is a vaccination to prevent HPV infection yet only 21 percent of people have received it, they write.
While the attention on breast cancer awareness is good, doctors agree that there should be just as much emphasis on women’s heart health. UTMB’s Dr. Fatima Khan tells Flow Space that one of the challenges is that women do not have the same signs and symptoms as men. “Most of the literature in the books and educational material is based on the research done on men, since we did not know for ages that heart disease can also impact women,” says Khan.
The extreme environments of places like Antarctica and Mt. Everest are perfect for Aerospace Medicine students needing to practice medicine and gather data that may influence and inform how health care is handled on future NASA missions to the moon and Mars.
UTMB and Texas A&M University are partnering to create tools that replicate female organs involved in pregnancy to allow medical drug testing for pregnant women. “If you go to Walgreens and look at their pharmacy aisle and pick up an over-the-counter drug, it may say ‘not tested in pregnancy,’” Dr. Ramkumar Menon told the Daily News. “We have developed a way to test both the mother and baby in a lab environment.”
The Division of Pediatric Surgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch took home the gold in the 2024 Hermes Creative Awards for its video elucidating the intricacies of gastrostomy tubes for patients, accessible at their convenience.
The reclassification of marijuana will change the way researchers will be able to study the drug, Dr. Kathryn Cunningham told the Daily News for a story on the U.S. Justice Department’s move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. “By reducing it to Schedule III, we would facilitate the research and allow laboratories to gain much more information and knowledge about the impact of marijuana and its constituents on public health,” Cunningham said.
Growth hormone injections significantly improved the neurologic symptoms of patients suffering from long COVID, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
“Overall, the evidence points to higher temperatures resulting in more bird-mosquito transmission and more what we call spillover infections to people,” Dr. Scott Weaver tells Grist for this article on how a changing climate is contributing to the spread of West Nile Virus.
Growing demand for surgical procedures to treat chronic pain and other medical conditions is contributing to shortages of anesthesia care providers, according to an op/ed in Anesthesiology. UTMB’s Dr. Amr Abouleish was the lead author of the op/ed and told the Pain News Network that “the labor supply-demand imbalance for anesthesia clinicians has reached critical levels, with major implications for safe and effective patient care."
Dr. Hasan Yasin’s latest column explores the various health benefits associated with sunlight exposure. From mood to production of vitamin D and other positive effects, sunlight has many benefits, Yasin writes.
The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and Texas A&M University have received a grant totaling around $7.5 million over five years from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to establish a center dedicated to promoting women's and pregnancy health research.
University of Texas Medical Branch John Sealy School of Medicine students Mallory Walters and Leonard Wang recently were announced as Fulbright Program Scholars.
Dr. Jerry Mansfield’s voice cracked as he talked about the death of his 15-year-old brother-in-law. It happened decades ago, but the emotion was fresh and the memory raw as Mansfield, new vice president and system chief nursing executive at the University of Texas Medical Branch, stood in front of a crowd gathered in the hallway of Jennie Sealy Hospital on the Galveston Campus.
Dr. Joan Richardson, chair, professor and provider with the UTMB Department of Pediatrics will hold serve as the organization's president for the next year.
“Accurately identifying patients with high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer that will not respond to BCG is essential so they can receive the treatment that is best suited for them,” said UTMB’s Dr. Stephen B. Williams in this article about a newly developed histology-based test designed to predict how bladder cancer patients will respond to Bacillus Calmette-Guérin treatment.
Dr. Michael Sheetz is the top scholar in the world publishing on cytoskeletons and among the top 0.05 percent of scholars according to ScholarGPS, an analytics site which tracks and ranks scholars and institutions worldwide.
A new collaborative study by researchers at The University of Texas Medical Branch and the University of Texas, Austin has revealed significant positive findings on the cognitive benefits of dual-language use among older Mexican Americans.
The Care Closet, which provides clothing, toiletries and other basic needs to patients and their families, is now available at the University of Texas Medical Branch League City, Clear Lake and Angleton Danbury campuses, in addition to the original program on the Galveston Campus.