University Health officials and community leaders gathered on Friday to celebrate the grand opening of the county-owned hospital’s Vida clinic, a three-story multispecialty health center on the South Side.
The 60,000-square-foot clinic is next to the Palo Alto Hospital, one of two new hospitals being built by University Health and scheduled to open in 2027. The Vida clinic will serve the underserved South Side community, which largely lacks nearby health care options compared to the more affluent North Side of San Antonio.
Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores said that the Vida clinic and coming Palo Alto Hospital are long overdue resources for “residents who have long been left behind.”
“No longer should your ZIP code determine your life expectancy,” she said. “Many of us can’t take the time from work or don’t have gas money or a car, or don’t have the resources to get routine checkups. This is why we needed Vida closer to home.”
University Health Vida offers urgent care services, primary and specialty care, behavioral health for adults and adolescents, pharmacy, imaging and lab testing.
Cooking classes and other health education resources will be provided as well.
The Vida clinic is also the new home of University Health’s Institute for Public Health and its new “Community Commons” program. The program will bring nonprofits on-site to collaborate, address various social issues for the underserved South Side community, and connect residents to resources.
Nonprofits and other partners include the city’s Metropolitan Health District, American Heart Association, Bexar County Public Health Department, Catholic Charities, ChildSafe San Antonio, Family Service San Antonio, UT San Antonio’s Kate Marmion School of Public Health, San Antonio Food Bank and several others.
Direct nonprofit services won’t be provided at the clinic. But the program will offer an opportunity for University Health to test public health strategies that could be deployed to the community, according to the Dr. Carol Huber, vice president of University Health’s Institute for Public Health.
The Vida clinic started taking patients in mid-December. Since then, with an entire floor dedicated to mental health services, the clinic is already treating 200 residents for mental health, University Health President and CEO Ed Banos said.
“The idea to build these facilities came from lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic,” University Health Board Chair Jimmy Hasslocher said. “One of the lessons is that health care organizations must take a leadership role and do more to help prevent illness, not just treat it.”
