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Texas Medical Center Skyline Update


WestGrayGuy

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Yeah, there is a massive need for nurses. The TMC seems to be the fastest growing district in HOU so far, with several buildings popping up every year, and many more planned. I love it.

Oh, and about it doubling in size- if anyone has seen the Channel 11 report from a few weeks ago, they said that they might even expand into midtown, and towards other areas.

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  • 2 months later...

Live surgical series new Internet reality show

Memorial Hermann Hospital officials are using the Internet to display the skills of their doctors.

And as an added benefit, video-streaming operations appear to be paying off in the way of increased interest from prospective patients.

This week, the hospital system hosted a live Webcast of Dr. Hazim J. Safi, chairman of the department of cardiothoracic and vascular surgery for The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, performing thoracoabdominal aneurysm repair surgery.

During the complex procedure, the patient "is almost literally cut in half," according to Memorial Hermann spokeswoman Jamie O'Roark.

Dr. Steve Allen, medical director for Memorial Hermann, served as the online moderator during the program, which is the first of a series.

He received e-mailed questions from viewers and relayed them to Safi during the surgery, who continues to answer e-mailed questions for one week following the procedure.

Putting procedures live on the Internet provides continuing medical education for doctors and helps raise consumer awareness, says O'Roark.

An element of on-line marketing is also evident.

Before the surgery was even performed, the hospital received several e-mails from people "asking for more information or to make an appointment with the doctor," says O'Roark.

Queries came from various states, including Louisiana, Connecticut, Iowa and North Carolina.

"We're hoping this is an excellent way to get our message out further and beyond the Houston area," O'Roark says. - Mary Ann Azevedo

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LOL.

The words that come to mind are the malpractice insurers saying, "PLEASE don't screw up!"

I never thought of it as a marketing ploy, but I can see the advantages of doing so. It can also have the benifits of perhaps showing the realities of surgery and then maybe pursuading (or not) kids/grads into that direction.

Ricco

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  • 1 month later...

Up Close: Amazing transformations in the ever-growing medical center

10:04 PM CST on Tuesday, January 18, 2005

By Dan Lauck / 11 News

It may seem with all the construction, you need to be a brain surgeon to navigate your way in and out of the Texas Medical Center these days.

KHOU-TV

The Texas Medical Center is already two to three times larger than any other medical center in the world.

With the building blocks of a new era in medicine, the area is going through an amazing transformation.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center it was a day to celebrate, a day to remember. Not because Judy Jordan had beaten cancer, but because she'd never had cancer and was at the prevention center anyway.

This was the day that MD Anderson opened the doors of its new, $110 million cancer prevention center. Judy Jordan was their first patient.

"The idea that we'd have a building that was dedicated strictly to prevention was a dream I never thought I'd see," Dr. Bernard Levin said.

If you're a doctor or medical researcher, the Texas Medical Center is the place to be.

The Texas Medical Center is a tangle of traffic and trains, of overhead skyways and crowded walkways, an ever-changing, regenerating kind of medical invertebrate, part hassle, part charm.

"If you're to attract the best and the brightest, which really is our objective, they don't want to spend their time driving around from a hospital here, a teaching facility there, a research laboratory over there," said Andrew Icken, Texas Medical Center executive vice president.

The challenge for Andrew Icken and Paul Sanders is to create an environment dense enough to satisfy the doctors, but not too intimidating to the average patient.

They have accomplished the density. It's comparable to lower Manhattan or downtown Chicago and it's growing every day.

Memorial Hermann, for example, is putting up two buildings along Fannin.

Both Prairie View's nursing school and Texas Women's University are building new homes.

The University of Texas Health Science Center is rebuilding both its medical and nursing school and UT is already underway on the Institute of Molecular Medicine.

But no one has been as busy as Susan Lipka of MD Anderson.

"Let's see, one, two, three, four, five. Five buildings," Lipka said. Which would mean a building being built each year.

The same day they opened the cancer prevention center, they also opened the ambulatory care center, a huge, imposing building next door.

When done, there will be five new buildings at a cost of nearly $1 billion.

"In our case, the baby boom population is coming of an age when cancer is a disease that you get in that age group," said Lipka.

With the forerunners of the baby boom turning 60, the construction has no end in sight.

They couldn't expand to the north or west, but they were lucky to the south. There were nearly 400 acres with mostly tract homes and small apartment buildings, which is nothing they couldn't afford.

Almost all of the property in the area they are calling 'mid-campus' has been purchased and should take 20 years to fill.

"But that doesn't mean that later on, it won't expand down to the 610 loop," said Lipka.

This boom comes at a time when health care costs are racing wildly ahead of the ability of Americans to pay for them. And according to Lipka, "That was always on our minds."

She points out they used carpet, rather than terrazzo tile and precast concrete, rather than granite, which doesn't matter one bit to patients like Judy Jordan. What matters is that they have a home.

The Texas Medical Center is already two to three times larger than any other medical center in the world.

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  • 6 months later...

713/214, it was not the Texas Medical Center that the article was trashing. It was all the rest of the hospitals that suck. In other words, if you are rich, you go to TMC. If not, you go somewhere else and get mediocre (or worse) care.

I have to admit, I thought the care for pneumonia was funny (it doesn't get cold here. What do we care about pneumonia!), even though I know that cold is not a cause.

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713 to 214, Boston is ranked 30th when it comes to pneunmonia. Using your line of reasoning, does that mean Harvard Medical Center sucks too?

Some statistics are better left to experts to decipher, and I believe this is true here.

Many statistics on hospitals are dubious unless you dig a little further. For example, MD Anderson has a high death rate when compared to other hospitals. Sounds shocking since it's a world-renowned hospital until you consider its area of excellence is treating cancer. People around the world with nothing left to lose go there as a last hope. [Edit] When you treat the sickest of the sick (as the med center does), of course the statistics are going to show you in a bad light unless you dig deeper. [Edit]

Lastly, since you're post seems to be more a dig on Houston than anything else, I'll add that now you're in Dallas, maybe you should be more concerned with the rate of complications in cosmetic surgery and leave the real medicine to us.

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^^^

LOL

Good point HeightGuy.

I always stress to never take a study whether on environment, traffic, etc seriously. Statistics need to be left to the people who know what they are doing.

I took some courses in it and my proffessor had two books on how to lie and mislead with statistics. Works great at debunking many of theses silly studies.

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What good does it do to tout Houston's Medical Center when the quality of care received there sucks compared to the rest of the nation?

It sounds like every comment you make regarding Houston seems as if you got some type of personal bias against Houston. What's your problem Chief?

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Guest danax

713 to 214 has his opinions as we all do, regardless of where he might come from. Please let's not turn this into another cross-state firefight.

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Sure he has opinions. I have opinions as well. I even say non flattering things about Houston often. But I try to offer solutions to the problems that I see. That is because I wish Houston to be the best city it can be. This particular poster only offers up what he sees as wrong with our city. To further add insult to injury he goes on to claim the superiority of his own city. I don't care about Dallas. I don't love it or hate it. I enjoy visiting it to see friends and family. However I don't need to be told that my city sucks and his city is so wonderful. THAT is why I call him a troll.

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Some statistics are better left to experts to decipher, and I believe this is true here.

I always stress to never take a study whether on environment, traffic, etc seriously. Statistics need to be left to the people who know what they are doing.

I can't wait to cite these statements on every other thread wherein statistics are used to tout Houston's "superiority."

Please remember you stated this! You can't have your cake, and eat it too. In other words, you can't prop up ONLY the studies that show Houston in a favorable light, while at the same time discounting the studies that show Houston's weaknesses.

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Like I said, some statistics are better left to experts to decipher, and I believe the hospital study cited at the beginning is one of them, but the below study on immunization rates is a dfferent story. Unlike a study that takes samples of data that is volunteered, this one is cold stark numbers:

For 2004, city rates near bottom in baseline shots for toddlers in urban areas

713 to 214, if you want to talk about something health-wise not going good in Houston, here's your chance.

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  • 4 weeks later...

According to my wife, there's an Urban Lofts sign on the corner bounded by SH 288, Yellowstone, and Ardmore (on the west side of 288).

Anyone know anything about this?

As much as I despise the Urban Lofts on Calumet, I think they'd be a good addition to this particular area. It's mostly an industrial area right now, with a few commercial places mixed in. I'm all for some additional residential in our area.

Eventually I'd like to see Yellowstone east of 288 becoming a commercial/retail strip. Right now it's a mix of vacant land and industrial areas (many of which are also vacant). It's ripe for development.

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