Southeast Texas Medical Associates, LLP James L. Holly, M.D. Southeast Texas Medical Associates, LLP


Letters - Pannill June 9, 1972 Med School Upheavel Spreads to Hospital District
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Page 10 A     SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS—Friday, June 9, 1972 Final Edition        

Med School Upheaval Spreads to Hospital District
by KEMPER DIEHL and BILL REDDELL Of the Express Staff

The upheaval rocking the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio apparently is contagious, and Thursday, it spread to the adjoin Bexar County Hospital District.

At the same time a group of the city’s most influential religious leaders fired off a telegram to the University of Texas Board of Regents expressing concern over recent developments and urging that the school’s involvement in health care for the needy be increased—a reference to the controversial OEO-funded poverty clinic which the school operates.

Four of the seven members of the board of managers of the hospital district Thursday issued a joint statement to “clarify and dispel” numerous allegations and statements regarding the medical school controversy and its relationship to the Bexar County Hospital District.

Board members making the statement, generally considered the more conservative wing of the board include Drs. Harvey Komet, Walter Walthall, and M. L. Preacher, and William Hinch.

“Certain members of the board of managers, including its chairman, Mrs. Jean Moye, have publically defended Dean (F. Carter) Pannill and Dr. Leon Cander in the present controversy, stating without these men in the hospital district, delivery of care to Bexar County’s indigent population would be totally lacking,” the four said.  (emphasis added)

“Constant reference is made to their role in the development of the family health clinic OEO, located at the Robert B. Green Hospital.  The community and the board of managers acknowledges their role in introducing this concept of total family care to Bexar County, but in its true perspective this single clinic was to be a model program to evaluate the feasibility of developing modular clinics.  This clinic was not intended to represent the start of countywide clinic network.”

The four went on to explain that as early as October, 1971, the board of managers began investigating the concept of satellite clinics entirely on its own. 

“The role of the medical school in this satellite clinic program was purposely not defined, as we felt these clinics would not be utilized for teaching purposes,” the four asserted. 

To allege, “as certain people have,” that the development of health care programs were the responsibility of Pannill and Cander “is to ignore the effort and strides made by those of us who have been working towards the development of improved services,” the four board members insisted. 

A statement that the East Side clinic and the Green family practice experiment were scuttled by the board of regents of the University of Texas, they said, is a total distortion of the truth. 

The board of regents has approved and endorsed the OEO clinic at the Green, they said, as had the Bexar County Medical Society.  The East Side clinic has been funded and will be opened this summer, they added. 

The four said it had been their intention to remain outside the administrative and political difficulties embroiling the medical school and the board of regents.

“We do not feel the hospital district should be involved in the present administration upheaval, contrary to what may be stated by certain board members,” they said.  Pour responsibility is to maintain and deliver health care and not take sides nor dictate policy at the university level.”  

The three doctors on the board said they deeply resent the insinuation that the Bexar Count and Texas Medical societies are exerting pressure to prevent the development of the satellite clinic program.  They said there has been “no organized efforts” to block these programs.

The city’s religious leaders, meanwhile, expressed their views on the matter in a wire sent to the regents at their board meeting in Galveston Friday and to the home of each board member. 

Signing the statement were Rabbi David Jacobson, Roman Catholic Archbishop Francis J. Furey, United Methodist Bishop O. Eugene Slater, retired Episcopal Bishop Everett Jones, Rev. Jimmy Allen of First Baptist Church, Rev. C. Don Baugh of the San Antonio Council of Churches and Bob Bass of the Del Salvador Presbytery.

The churchmen asked the regents “to assure by official resolution, the San Antonio community” that the high standards of the medical school and the “community commitment of this school will continue.”