Doctor’s Hospital and UT Medicine ALS multidisciplinary clinic teams partner for the Rio Grande Valley clinic opening.
We are pleased to announce the addition of a fifth ALS multidisciplinary clinic in Texas. The Rio Grande Valley clinic opened on Friday, October 27 at Doctor’s Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg, Texas. Headed by neurologist Zuka A. Khabbazeh, MD, the team met with and treated five patients on opening day.
As ALS progresses, the needs of patients increase significantly, and it becomes difficult for patients to leave their homes. Patient care clinics house all the doctors an medical professionals that an ALS patient needs to see, including physicians, speech pathologists, and counselors. These physicians work together to ensure that each patient receives top-quality, comprehensive care. This multidisciplinary approach is scientifically proven to extend patients’ lives.
“Providing access to high-quality multidisciplinary care to all people with ALS across the state of Texas is a top priority for the Texas Chapter,” said Tanner Hockensmith, Executive Director, ALS Texas. “Adding this clinic takes us another step closer to fulfilling that goal, and subsequently, our vision of creating a world without ALS.”
The ALS multidisciplinary clinic model was created in 1982 by Stanley Appel, MD, when he saw the multitude of needs of ALS patients and the benefit of seeing multiple doctors of varying specialties in just one clinic visit rather than multiple separate appointments. The Houston Methodist ALS Clinic was the first multidisciplinary care center for patients with ALS in the nation and is another clinic with which we partner.
A special thanks to the ALS multidisciplinary clinic team at UT Medicine in San Antonio, especially Carlayne Jackson, MD FAAN, for training the team at Doctor’s Hospital and for traveling to the Rio Grande Valley to assist with the clinic opening.
If you are a person with ALS who is interested in attending the Rio Grande Valley clinic, contact Linda at linda@alstexas.org.
