Making the Rounds November 16, 2021 Issue 302

Friends & Colleagues,  In working to help meet the healthcare needs of Southern Nevada, the school of medicine continues to build the strong partnerships that enable the medical school to be a catalyst for transforming healthcare in Southern Nevada. Next year, the first permanent building of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV will be finished, thanks to the generous donors who contributed to the Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation, a nonprofit corporation committed to the community, UNLV, and enhancing academic medicine in the Las Vegas Valley. Other collaborations with entities such as the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, area hospitals, civic and government leaders, and donors help ensure our students receive the necessary training to apply best practices that enhance health equity and quality of life. In today’s newsletter, we put the spotlight on Mason Van Houweling, the chief executive officer of University Medical Center, our main teaching hospital and Nevada’s major clinical campus. Together, Mason and I work to make sure that the alliance of our two institutions provides the most extensive and complete teaching programs for physicians who someday will staff hospitals and clinics throughout the state.  Marc J. Kahn, M.D. Dean, Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Medicine By The Numbers Immunization Percent of children in the U.S. vaccinated by age 24 months: Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (4+ doses DTP, DT, or DTaP): 80.7% Polio (3+ doses): 92.6% Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) (1+ doses): 90.8% Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) (primary series + booster dose): 79.6% Hepatitis B (Hep B) (3+ doses): 90.6% Chickenpox (Varicella) (1+ doses): 90.2% Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) (4+ doses): 81.0% Combined 7-vaccine series: 68.3% Source: cdc.gov

School of Medicine and UMC Continue Partnership To Improve Healthcare In Southern Nevada

Marc J. Kahn, MD, Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Dean, seen here with Mason Van Houweling, University Medical Center CEO.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that the continued evolution of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV/University Medical Center (UMC) alliance will go a long way in determining how well medical care is transformed in Southern Nevada. The relationship between a county safety-net hospital and a public medical school is sacrosanct in the combined mission to care for our community. Mason Van Houweling, UMC’s CEO, is one of the leaders in the strategic medical relationship that pairs the region’s only allopathic (MD) medical school and its clinical arm, UNLV Health, with UMC, a nonprofit hospital that houses Nevada’s only Level 1 Trauma Center, where school of medicine faculty-surgeons save the lives of the severely critically injured at a rate (96 percent) that is recognized as among the very best in the nation. As you might expect, Van Houweling and Marc Kahn, MD, dean of the medical school, share a common goal -- the improvement of healthcare in Southern Nevada -- that requires a frequent meeting of the minds on just how to get that done today, and in the future. Both men view the medical school/hospital partnership as symbiotic, mutually beneficial. Mason Van Houweling

While UMC benefits from having medical school faculty physicians leading, practicing, and teaching in 17 specialty programs that range from surgical critical care to pediatrics, medical school students studying to become MDs, as well as newly minted MDs training in advanced residency and fellowship programs, benefit from learning at a hospital which not only affords specialty programs clinical homes, but also provides the most advanced surgical technology in Nevada. In addition to having the state’s highest level trauma center, UMC is also home to Nevada’s only: center for transplantation, verified burn care center, designated pediatric trauma center, and pediatric robotic surgery program -- all of which support patients and UNLV medical teams. A mutually beneficial partnership, indeed.  To those affiliated with the medical school who’ve yet to learn much about the man who took over the reins at UMC seven years ago, a written snapshot of Van Houweling may well prove compelling. Today, he serves as chairman of the Nevada Hospital Association that advocates for Nevada’s hospitals, health systems, communities, and patients before legislative and regulatory bodies. In other words, Van Houweling carries some real weight on medical issues in the Silver State. He took over the reins at UMC at the end of 2014, when the county hospital had a history of losing $70 million a year and was in danger of closing. Two years after he arrived at the county hospital -- three other CEOs in the hospital’s then-recent past couldn’t stop UMC’s financial hemorrhaging -- Van Houweling had UMC more than $30 million in the black, money that would be used for much-needed facility improvements.  So he can navigate the Byzantine financial world of healthcare.  Though then Clark County Commissioner, now Gov. Steve Sisolak, praised Van Houweling’s financial acumen and said he’s “clearly effective” at finding ways to increase revenue, Van Houweling said “without a team effort of the governing board, insurance providers, physicians, nurses, and our entire staff, it wouldn’t have happened. A team effort has been the key.”  Yes, Van Houweling, is an evangelist for the “There’s no I in team” style of management, a key to a successful partnership.

More recently, Van Houweling’s financial team has had to deal with the financial storm brought on in 2020 by the pandemic that UMC and other hospitals have had to weather. Because of the virus, surgeries and other revenue-producing medical care had to be delayed, which is problematic at any medical center, but especially challenging at UMC, a safety net hospital that counts the poor and the uninsured as patients. While the CEO notes that the hard work of his financial team has been able to overcome the losses of 2020, and actually put the hospital budget in the black, he cautions that “we have to remember the pandemic is still with us. It’s still not over and poses new business challenges and dynamics.” UMC staff working together as a team

Van Houweling repeatedly points out that it is because of the medical care provided by UNLV Health, as well as UMC nurses and staff, that COVID patients at the hospital have received the latest treatments for the virus, including monoclonal antibodies. The medical team at UMC headed by Angelica Honsberg, MD, the UNLV Health pulmonologist and medical school assistant professor who heads the UMC Intensive Care Unit, has been sharing important data with researchers at Harvard University and the Mayo Clinic, data that ultimately results in enhanced therapeutics.

“Dr. Kahn and I both realize that a solid partnership can bring more to the community than we could accomplish as individual institutions. We’re both committed to taking medicine to a higher level in Southern Nevada." Mason Van Houweling

“When you see the working relationship of the medical school and the hospital, we are all together, finding the best ways to deal with COVID,” said Van Houweling. “It’s been all hands on deck. Without residents going the extra mile, we couldn’t have handled it.” The UMC CEO noted that almost immediately after Dr. Kahn arrived in Las Vegas in April 2020, soon after the pandemic began, he started reaching out to UMC and the community at large. “I was so encouraged by his energy, his commitment to Southern Nevada,” Van Houweling said. With Dr. Kahn at the helm, the medical school quickly began curbside testing for COVID-19 and launched convalescent plasma treatment at UMC, a therapy which strengthens the immune system by taking antibodies from a recovered coronavirus patient's blood plasma and giving it to another patient who is struggling to ward off the virus. Vaccinations to fight off the virus were given to the public by the medical school as soon as federal authorities gave the OK. UNLV, aware of Dr. Kahn’s ability to get things done, expanded his portfolio, also naming him vice president of health affairs, a position that sees him directing the development of Nevada’s first academic health center. That center, with UMC as its primary teaching hospital, will bring together the university’s five healthcare professional schools in nursing, integrated health, community health sciences, dentistry, and allopathic medicine to advance the region’s health care.  Van Houweling said he and Dr. Kahn are working on an initiative that will strengthen services for patients at UMC who are dealing with neurological, vascular, stroke, oncological, and mental health issues. “Dean Kahn and I are always talking about how the medical school and UMC can improve care together. There's been a lot of early-morning and late-after-work meetings.” So intertwined are the medical school and UMC that it is virtually impossible on any given day to not see Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine faculty physicians, fellows, residents, and students either working cases at the hospital or in the midst of training. Van Houweling began his training more than 25 years ago at the University of Central Florida. There, he earned both a bachelor’s and master of science degree in health services administration. He began his hospital administration career in Orlando, then moved west to Dallas and on to Spring Valley and Valley Hospitals in Las Vegas before joining UMC. All the while, he also served as a hospital administrator in the Air Force Reserves, responsible for the administration and operations of a reserve medical treatment facility serving 2800 patients annually.  Last year, after 25 years in the military that included serving as a chief medical administrator during Operation Enduring Freedom -- Afghanistan, he retired as a lieutenant colonel.  In September 2020, while on a date night with his wife, Denise, Van Houweling, the married father of two teenage girls, found himself actually providing hands-on medical care at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas. “I saw this man lying on the casino floor who was sweating profusely,” Van Houweling recalled. “I think other people may have thought he was drunk or tripped. I bent down to see what was going on with him and found he had no pulse.” He immediately began CPR chest compressions. The man, Pablo Bernabe, who had been celebrating his 42nd anniversary with his wife, was in full cardiac arrest. Golden Nugget staff provided an automated external defibrillator, which shocked Bernabe as Van Houweling continued CPR. Soon, Bernabe opened his right eye. Cheers for a life saved could be heard throughout the casino. “What happened that night is the most meaningful thing that’s ever happened to me,” Van Houweling told the Las Vegas Review Journal. “It changed my life.”  “He (Van Houweling) saved my life,” Bernabe told the media. Bernabe underwent successful open-heart surgery at UMC and now lives in Arizona. Proud that UMC is the hospital the U.S. President would use in Las Vegas if he has a bellyache, heart attack or something more serious, Van Houweling is confident that the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine/UMC partnership will continue to result in an ever-growing number of successful outcomes that the entire community will benefit from. “Dr. Kahn and I both realize that a solid partnership can bring more to the community than we could accomplish as individual institutions,” he said. “We’re both committed to taking medicine to a higher level in Southern Nevada.”

In The News

Addressing Doctor Shortage As Las Vegas Population Grows KTNV - 13 Interviewed: Dean Marc J. Kahn

Health District Begins Giving COVID Vaccine Shots to Children 5-11 Years Old Las Vegas Sun Interviewed: Dr. David Di John

Nevada Drivers Need to Slow Down To Save Lives Las Vegas Weekly Interviewed: Dr. Deborah Kuhls

Upcoming Events

November 18: NIPM Fall Seminar Series (Virtual) November 18: KSOM Process for Clinical Research at UNLV and Clinical UMC November 23: Mentoring Session for Pre-Med Students of Color November 30: Mentoring Session for Pre-Med Veterans More Upcoming Events

www.unlv.edu/medicine

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