South Side deserves quality health care
The impending closure of Texas Vista Hospital Medical Center will exacerbate already limited access to acute medical care on the city’s South Side.
After Texas Vista’s closure May 1, there will only be 110 hospital beds south of downtown. The South Side also lacks specialty doctors of all kinds, while also lacking enough primary care doctors to effectively care for such a large population.
Access to quality primary and specialty medical care largely determines health outcomes. People with access to quality health care are more likely to have a longer life expectancy and enjoy a better quality of life in old age than people who lack such access.
High death rates in areas that lack the medical infrastructure to meet their health care needs take a devastating toll on the community. COVID deaths through June 2021 were greater in South Side districts. Diabetes-related amputations are three times higher in some South Side ZIP codes than in the state. Childhood asthma exacerbations due to poor air quality and lack of access to care is higher in these areas as well.
According to a 2019 study by Uthealth San Antonio and Ut-southwestern, life expectancy varies by many years from parts of the North Side to parts of the South Side of San Antonio.
The South Side has historically been, and continues to be, a medically underserved community. Black and brown neighborhoods were excluded from the economic stimulus programs that the state and federal governments were providing to help relieve the effects of the Great Depression. Facing a national housing crisis, in 1933 the federal government began redlining, a program of discriminatory practices that intentionally refused access to home loans to residents living in areas considered to be “risky investments.” The South Side was a target of redlining. The resulting lack of infrastructure funding and loss of personal and family wealth due to these discriminatory practices has had a clear multigenerational impact.
University Health System has a plan for a 256-bed hospital in the South Side with a projected opening date of 2026 or 2027. While this is a much-needed investment, the intervening years will create a huge void for access to acute care for the South Side population. What will happen to these residents? Where will they get emergency and urgent care for their at-risk pregnancies, heart attacks, strokes and other medical needs in order to avoid complications or death?
Most importantly, access to quality health care is a human right, and yet San Antonio continues to face challenging disparities in health outcomes, largely determined by where a person lives.
If we want to reverse decades, even centuries of health care (and other types of ) inequality and discrimination, we need to go where the disparities are and make the requisite investments of time, energy and resources until our goals are met. We need to move medicine to areas with the greatest needs to serve the least of these. The South Side deserves quality health care now. Our shared humanity demands it, and the lives of South Side San Antonians depend on it.
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa is a boardcertified vascular surgeon and Founder of the SAVE Clinic. Alicia M. Reyes-barriéntez, PH.D., is assistant professor of political science at Texas A&m-university-san Antonio. Adriana Rocha García, PH.D., is the councilwoman for District 4.