Happy birthday to San Antonio's University Health System.
It was 100 years ago today, February 2, 1917, that the Robert B. Green Hospital, Bexar County's first public hospital, opened on the northwest edge of what is now downtown San Antonio, on the spot where University's Downtown Facility now stands.
San Antonio had a population of 96,000 on this date 100 years ago, the the Robert B. Green cost $250,000 to build.
The hospital's mission was 'to provide the most advanced care available to all resident,s regardless of thei abil ity to pay, to educate physicians, nurses, and other health professionals, to find new and better ways to treat and prevent illness, and to improve the overall health of our community.'
It was fifty years ago next year, in 1968, that the first University Hospital, then called Medical Center Hospital, was constructed in the still fairly empty Medical Center portion on what was then far northwest Bexar County, in conjunction with the newly created medical school, the U.T. Health Science Center, now called U.T. Health.
University Health System today has a network of more than 20 primary care, specialty and school-based health centers, along with two mobile clinics.
PHOTO: UNIVERSITY HEALTH SYSTEM