Texas A&M medical students will complete clinical rotations at University Health’s Palo Alto Hospital and Vida clinic on San Antonio’s South Side starting in 2028 as part of a new collaboration. A residency program in internal medicine and family medicine at the South Side hospital is also in the works.
The collaboration is part of an agreement between Texas A&M’s College of Medicine, located in the Bryan-College Station metro area, and Bexar County’s hospital system, aimed at bolstering the city’s health care workforce and combating medical brain drain in San Antonio.
The broader goal is ensuring access to care on the city’s South Side, which has long faced poorer health outcomes and fewer nearby providers.
“The goal is not just to improve the health care workforce by creating more physicians,” said Bryan Alsip, University Health’s chief medical officer. “That part of the community is still facing a disparity in access to health care. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re investing in that area.”
The agreement also strengthens University Health’s standing as one of the busiest landing spots for medical students and resident physicians in San Antonio.
The hospital system maintains clinical affiliation agreements with UT Health San Antonio’s Long School of Medicine and the University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine, allowing medical students and resident doctors to receive hands-on training at University Hospital in the South Texas Medical Center.
“We enthusiastically welcome future generations of ‘Aggie docs’ to San Antonio for training,” University Health President and CEO Edward Banos said in a news release, “and we hope they stay here to build their practices and serve our community with great skill and compassion.”
A new training site on the South Side
Texas A&M’s Naresh K. Vashisht College of Medicine’s main campus is in Bryan-College Station, but the school also maintains satellite campuses in Round Rock, Dallas and Houston. And the new partnership could bring a similar footprint to San Antonio.
The agreement has been five years in the making, Alsip said, beginning with conversations involving Texas A&M University-San Antonio, located across the street from University Health’s Vida clinic and the future Palo Alto Hospital.
In 2022, TAMUSA and University Health signed an agreement aimed at building a health care workforce pipeline between the university and the nearby medical facilities. Around the same time, Texas A&M’s medical school was looking to expand its footprint.
Initially, Texas A&M students will rotate through the Southside sites in shorter stints, around a month, Alsip said. TAMUSA will provide classroom and office space as part of a broader collaboration. But a larger program could follow.
“In the future, the Texas A&M system actually envisions having a medical school campus in San Antonio,” Alsip said. That would open the door for students to spend their four years of schooling in the city, including classroom work and clinical rotations.”
Medical students typically complete clinical rotations during their third and fourth years, gaining hands-on experience at clinics and hospitals before they apply to a residency program.
Texas is home to 16 accredited medical schools, including San Antonio’s Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio and the University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine. Officials at those schools have also expressed interest in clinical rotations at Palo Alto and Vida, Alsip said, but nothing has been made official.
In addition to medical student rotations, University Health is working on a residency program at Palo Alto Hospital in internal medicine and family medicine. The program will require accreditation through the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
Hospital officials both locally and across the U.S. are pushing for more graduate medical education slots, residency positions required for medical school graduates to become licensed physicians.
University Health already serves as one of the largest training sites in San Antonio, with the bulk of medical students rotating through University Hospital coming from UT Health San Antonio.
San Antonio’s largest hospital system, Methodist Healthcare, also established its first graduate medical education program recently, with the goal of eventually becoming one of the largest resident training providers in the city.
University Health expansion
The training opportunities are tied to University Health’s $1.7 billion expansion of the county hospital system, which includes three new community hospitals. The Retama Hospital coming to San Antonio’s far Northeast could also become a teaching hospital, Alsip said, as officials look for potential academic partners.
Palo Alto Hospital is scheduled to open in April 2027 with 166 beds. In January, officials celebrated the opening of the nearby Vida clinic, a three-story multispecialty health center offering a variety of services.
The Southside campus has been billed by hospital officials and county leaders as a major investment in a community that has historically faced limited access to care and worse health outcomes.
By bringing students and eventually residents into the area, University Health hopes to build a workforce, including physicians, pharmacists, nurses and others who are more likely to stay.
“We would like to be contributory to the growth of individuals in health care that not only are trained on the South Side, but also are therefore interested in staying there to provide that care,” Alsip said. “You train where you work, and we’ve seen evidence to support that model.”
