The continued evolution of the alliance between the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV and University Medical Center is crucial to transforming health care 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.
Dr. Mason Van Houweling, UMC’s CEO, is one of the leaders in the strategic medical relationship that pairs the region’s only allopathic medical school and its clinical arm, UNLV Health, with UMC.
Van Houweling and Dr. Marc J. Kahn, dean of the medical school, share a common goal — the improvement of health care in Southern Nevada. Both men view the medical school/hospital partnership as symbiotic, mutually beneficial.
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 doctors, as well as newly minted doctors 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.
The partnership between UMC and UNLV Health has paid dividends for COVID-19 patients. Those patients have received the latest treatments for the virus, including monoclonal antibodies. The medical team at UMC, headed by Dr. Angelica Honsberg, 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. It's data that ultimately results in enhanced therapeutics.
“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,” Van Houweling said. “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 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. Vaccinations to fight off the virus were given to the public by the medical school as soon as federal authorities gave the OK."
Van Houweling said he and 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.
Van Houweling began his training more than 25 years ago at the University of Central Florida. 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.
Last September while out with his wife, Denise, Van Houweling, the 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 said. “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.”
Bernabe underwent successful open-heart surgery at UMC and now lives in Arizona.
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.”
