Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital Overview

The Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital (ALMMVH), located at 7400 Merton Mintor Street in San Antonio, is operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The hospital was named for Texan Audie Leon Murphy, famed war hero, actor, and songwriter, who was heralded as the most decorated soldier of World War II. On November 20, 1970, groundbreaking took place on the new $31,993,000 Veteran’s Administration hospital in the South Texas Medical Center. The hospital was officially dedicated on November 17, 1973. The 615-bed acute care facility, provides primary, secondary, and tertiary health care in medicine, surgery, neuropsychiatry, and rehabilitation. It also supports a 120-bed nursing home and a thirty-bed Spinal Cord Injury Center. An active ambulatory care program provides primary services to eligible veterans throughout South Texas. Upon its opening in 1973, the hospital was a component of the South Texas Medical Center, which originally served forty-one counties and a veteran population of 300,000. In the 2020s Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital was one of seven medical institutions of the South Texas Medical Center.

Currently, the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital is part of the South Texas Veterans Health Care System (STVHCS), which was created on March 17, 1995, with the integration of the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital in San Antonio and the Kerrville VA Medical Center in Kerrville. STVHCS is comprised of three divisions—referred to as the Audie L. Murphy Division, the Kerrville Division, and the satellite Clinic Division. The Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital is one of two inpatient campuses (the other is the Kerrville facility) of the STVHCS. Veterans services are carried out at the hospital and at fifteen satellite outpatient clinics in San Antonio, Kerrville, New Braunfels, Seguin, and Victoria. These community-based outpatient clinics are contracted to provide primary care services to veterans closer to their home or work.

The Audie Murphy medical facility in San Antonio and the Kerrville VA Hospital oversee the health care services of approximately 80,000 veterans. The STVHCS serves one of the largest primary service areas in the nation, with sixty-one counties. In 1993 the facility employed 2,000 persons and had an operating budget of $135 million. In 2010 the facility employed more than 3,400, and the budget for STVHCS was $558 million. By 2020 the South Texas Veterans Health Care System provided care for approximately 100,000 enrolled veterans, reported 1.8 million outpatient visits, and had an operational budget of $1.01 billion.

As a comprehensive care facility, Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital (ALMMVH) provides other services, including open-heart surgery, bone marrow transplantation, magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography. The Audie Murphy Research Services, among the top ten research and development services in the Department of Veterans Affairs, dedicates 28,000 square feet to medical investigations. The Biomedical Research Foundation of South Texas was established in 1989 to support the research mission of the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital. In 1992 more than 150 investigators pursued 500 separate studies in such diverse areas as aging, fungal infection, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, and the service was the only Veterans Affairs unit included in a nationwide Interleukin-2 cancer study. In the 2020s the hospital conducted ongoing studies on cardiac surgery, geriatrics, diabetes, cancer, and HIV. It houses programs that include substance abuse residential rehabilitation treatment, treatment for spinal cord injuries, a community living center, and other services for medical, psychiatric, and vocational care. The hospital also provides treatment in the fields of orthopedics, traumatic brain injuries, urology, post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as services geared for women veterans.

The Audie Murphy Hospital is affiliated with all five schools that constitute the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and with forty-one other academic institutions. ALMMVH serves as a teaching hospital. Graduate Medical Education residencies are overwhelmingly based there as well as the Frank Tejeda Outpatient Clinic (a member of the satellite Clinic Division).  

Due to the dedication of its clinical and administrative staff, the hospital is home to many unique and outstanding programs. Dental-implant procedures were pioneered by the facility for the entire federal government. In 1988 the hospital was selected as a Geriatric Research Evaluation and Clinical Center site. The hospital's sharing agreements with the Department of Defense and the private sector have resulted in savings to the federal government and a wide range of services to veterans. Some significant programs established through sharing agreements have included lung transplants, liver transplants, heart transplants, bone-marrow transplants, magnetic resonance imaging, and linear accelerator treatment. ALMMVH offers telemedicine, access to online health resources, and a crisis line.   

Audie L Murphy Memorial VA Hospital was designated a Military Order of the Purple Heart Hospital on February 24, 2020, and was the first hospital in the nation to receive this honor. Similarly, the South Texas Veterans Health Care System became the third system in the United States to receive Purple Heart designation. Because the hospital is named for Audie Leon Murphy, it housed the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Room, which showcased a collection of Audie Murphy memorabilia, on loan from the Murphy family. Because of the hospital’s need for more space, the collection was moved in 2011 and eventually made part of a permanent exhibit at the Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum in Greenville, Texas. Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital underwent various renovations, including construction of a new welcome center, in 2020.