The Galveston County Daily News

The University of Texas Medical Branch had never been more vulnerable than it was in January when Texas lawmakers convened their 81st legislative session.

Hurricane Ike and politics threatened to disassemble the 118-year-old institution that had employed 8,000 people and provided 550 hospital beds.

Whether the University of Texas System Board of Regents, long discouraged by the medical branch’s inability to operate in the black, would support its restoration was in doubt as the session began.

“We came so close to being extinguished compared to other cities and other institutions that have gone through something like this terrible storm,” said Dr. Ben Raimer, senior vice president for health policy and legislative affairs at the medical branch.

But when the tense session adjourned, lawmakers had appropriated $566.5 million to the medical branch for the next biennium, including funding that would allow the institution to return hospital capacity to pre-Hurricane Ike levels and resume treating indigent patients.

When insurance proceeds, Federal Emergency Management Agency funds and public and private matches made possible by state appropriations are tallied, the medical branch will have $1.4 billion to restore and expand services.

During the weekend, lawmakers approved:

• Senate Bill 1, the budget bill for the biennium that begins Sept. 1. The bill contains $566.5 million in general revenue funding for the medical branch, an increase of nearly $109 million over the previous biennium;

• House Bill 4586 gives the medical branch $150 million to match $450 million from the federal government for Ike-related repairs;

By approving this bill, lawmakers also gave the medical branch more money to treat prisoners through a state contract. Lawmakers gave the medical branch $48 million, mostly for costs it sustained in the current biennium. (SB 1 increased next biennium’s correctional managed care funding by $92.5 million.); and

• House Bill 51 authorizes $150 million in revenue bonds for a new hospital building on the campus. Known as the Jennie Sealy replacement hospital, the facility would give the medical branch another 220 beds. John Sealy Hospital, where floodwater swamped the first floor, must be rebuilt to make room for a pharmacy, blood bank, sterile processing and other services on other floors, leaving space for only about 370 beds. But the $150 million is contingent on the formation of a taxing district, such as a hospital district, or some other local contributions.

The tuition revenue bonds would match $200 million from The Sealy & Smith Foundation.

Many of the appropriations tracked a plan by state Rep. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, who called for leveraging federal, state and philanthropic funding to rebuild and modernize John Sealy Hospital and restore its trauma center, and for moving ahead with pre-hurricane plans to build a $250 million surgical tower on the island.

Eiland’s plan called for allowing the medical branch to keep the $90 million it earns in the federal Disproportionate Share Hospital Program, but which the state currently keeps. But the dollars already had been factored into the state budget. Lawmakers instead gave the medical branch a $96 million increase in general revenue appropriations.

Raimer credited not only the government for the appropriations, but also medical students, island residents and business leaders, many who traveled to Austin to lobby for support of the institution.

“It has been a pilgrimage I will not long forget,” Raimer said. “I’m very happy with the outcome but I want to be quick to acknowledge that it was the combined work of an enormous number of people.”

All legislation awaits Gov. Rick Perry’s signature.