Laredo Medical Center Marks its 127-year Commitment to Care
1/19/2022
For Laredo Medical Center, 2021 marked 127 years of a longstanding commitment to the health and wellbeing of Laredo and area residents. While the year continued to offer many challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic, our caregivers remained steadfast and focused in their mission to help patients and their families with life’s health needs, whether for the birth of a child, an unplanned medical emergency, or at the end of life.
“Top of mind for me is a thank you to the outstanding members of our caregiving team and medical staff at Laredo Medical Center,” said CEO Jorge Leal, FACHE. “They are the foundation of our ability to deliver safe, quality healthcare and they continued going above and beyond during the second year of the pandemic to present day. They attend to the ebb and flow of patient surges and adjust to ever-changing guidelines. Our staff delivers care with compassion and does what needs to be done for their patients. They are heroes. Every day.”
Laredo Medical Center understands the importance of keeping healthcare close to home. Working with our medical staff and a local board of physicians and community leaders, our administrative team continuously reviews how to best meet the healthcare needs of our community. We regularly review the utilization of our services as well as our region’s demographics to determine which services are most needed.
Our commitment to excellence has been demonstrated several ways:
- accreditation - Laredo Medical Center’s A.R. Sanchez Cancer Center was granted three-year accreditation by the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons, meaning that the care and treatment patients receive LMC’s cancer center meets the same standards and follows the same guidelines as other accredited cancer centers.
- strong performance - When supervised recovery from illness or surgery is needed for a loved one, families can count on the Laredo Medical Center Skilled Nursing Unit (SNU), which is among the 13% of U.S. skilled nursing facilities, recognized as a Best Nursing Home for 2021-22 by U.S. News & World Report for the fifth year in a row.
- quality of care - Laredo Medical Center has once again earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval© for Advanced Certification for Primary Stroke Centers, demonstrating it is accredited and meets The Joint Commission’s highest standards of care;
Additionally, Laredo Medical Center has been recognized by:
- The Joint Commission as an accredited laboratory;
- the American Academy of Sleep Medicine as an accredited sleep center meeting or exceeding all standards for specialized treatment for obstructive sleep apnea and other common sleep disorders;
- American College of Cardiology as an accredited Chest Pain Center v6 with Primary Percutaneous Coronary Interventions;
- Texas Department of State Health Services as an Advanced Level III Trauma facility and designations as a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and as a Level II specialty care maternal facility, associated with the TexasAIM state program for maternal safety;
- Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program for our bariatric program; and
- American College of Radiology for CT, MRI and Mammography in each of our diagnostic imaging centers.
Laredo Medical Center continues to recruit new physicians to our community, both primary and specialists, who will enjoy living in our region and being part of a close-knit community, ideally, for the long term. We are pleased to welcome Dr. Michael Morris, general and bariatric surgery, to Laredo Surgical Associates; Dr. Joaquin G. Cigarroa IV, interventional cardiology, joining Dr. Ricardo J.G. Cigarroa II at Cigarroa Clinic; Dr. Kyle Biggs, ob-gyn with Gateway Community Health Center; and Dr. Alex Trivette, ob-gyn joining Dr. Dagoberto Gonzalez.
Additionally, Laredo Medical Center affiliate Primary Care Associates of Laredo opened a new and larger office at LMC North for three family medicine physicians, including Dr. Richard Bang, Dr. Christopher Tchou and Dr. Jesus Aguirre-Burgos. At LMC South, we welcomed Dr. Miguel Villarino. All four physicians have a combined total of 74 years of experience in family medicine.
The new doctors join 165 active physicians already practicing on the medical staff, caring for patients in the hospital and their clinics.
Furthermore, the hospital continues to enhance its services to a growing community, as evidenced through its primary care residency programs where they graduated their first 16 resident physicians and enrolled 48 resident physicians between family medicine and internal medicine. LMC also welcomed seven medical students from the University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine. They are third-year medical students, performing their clinical rotations for one year at Laredo Medical Center with the potential to later join as residents themselves.
The hospital has also brought more comfort and convenience with the grand opening of the new and expanded Infusion Center, dedicated to providing quality patient care for those who require chemotherapy and hydration therapy, as well as other infusion services, provided by certified registered nurses who specialize in chemotherapy, intravenous therapy and hydration.
Other significant investments:
- expansion of LMC’s surgical services by bringing to Laredo a robotic-assisted surgical system that often provides better outcomes during the recovery process for complex operations;
- new technology was acquired, to offer for the first time at the hospital, an orbital atherectomy, an advanced life-saving procedure to clear calcified coronary artery blockages; and
- Magnetic resonance imaging upgrade to our radiology department and an upgrade to our automated medication dispensing system in our pharmacy department at the main campus
“We relish being a part of the Laredo community today, as we have been for 127 years. Everything we do is because we want to continue to be a resource to support our family, friends and neighbors with the world-class medical services they need,” said Leal.
For more information, call (956) 796-3223.
Laredo Medical Center is Laredo’s largest hospital—a 326-bed licensed, acute care hospital offering a full range of inpatient and outpatient services.
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