In a move that has been expected for over a year but nevertheless shakes the foundation of Houston’s huge Texas Medical Center community, Baylor College of Medicine announced yesterday that it is ending its 50 year primary affiliation with Methodist Hospital as its main teaching hospital and entering into an agreement to make St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital its primary teaching hospital.
Baylor (which has no affiliation with Baylor University in Waco) is one of two medical schools in the Medical Center (the University of Texas Health Science Center is the other) and the older of the two. In addition to the financial considerations that induced Baylor to make the move, the affiliation with St. Luke’s now gives Baylor a direct relationship with two of the Medical Center’s best hospitals, St. Luke’s and its world-renowned affiliate, Texas Children’s Hospital.
Although the severing of the Baylor-Methodist relationship is unfortunate in several respects, it may turn out to be a good thing for the Medical Center as a whole if Methodist and UT agree that Methodist would become UT’s main teaching facility in the Medical Center. Such a relationship would give Methodist a direct relationship with another of the Medical Center’s world recognized hospitals — UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and would either supplement or replace UT’s existing relationship with the Memorial Hermann Hospital System. UT’s relationship with Memorial Hermann has always been hindered by Memorial Hermann’s relatively limited presence in the Medical Center, where its only hospital is Hermann Hospital, which is much smaller than either Methodist or St. Luke’s.