Amy Gallagher

Note: In this column, I wish to honor our veterans in East Texas who provide health care services to our vast region representing 38 counties.

History teaches us the connection of the past to the present in every area of our lives, notably in the way our medical innovations and health care services first came to be and how those innovations have improved overall care for all of us. It is through the exemplary service of our military who first brought us the life-saving care of plasma, triage and ambulatory services on the frontlines during World War II.

In his historical account describing the time-saving workarounds to save the lives of our American soldiers during World War II, “Desperate Surgery in the Pacific War: Doctors and Damage Control for American Wounded, 1941-1945,” Thomas Helling, MD, explains the inventive and quick-witted mindset of WWII medical teams who discovered plasma as a substitute to whole blood as a means to temporize a trauma patient when whole blood was not readily available on the frontline. The conditions of wartime would test their dedication and resolve to save lives.

What began as high-speed fieldhouse experimental medical care would transform into high-quality innovative care routinely applied as best practices in our hospitals today. Connecting the dots of war history to the historical advancements in medicine today is a tribute to those medical teams who served in WWII.

I had the privilege of serving as a book reviewer of Helling’s book for global military studies review as published on my UNT.Academia.edu profile and encourage you to read my review. Better yet, I encourage you to read his book.

Applying a strong work ethic to navigate complex systems and processes with great success, U.S. Army Veteran Ali Birjandi, MBA, MHA, served as a heavy machinery mechanic improving the operability of military tanks to strengthen the resolve of our frontline soldiers. For the past 25 years, he has engineered innovative improvements to ensure organizational health care performance while saving medical costs in an increasingly costly health care system. Today, Birjandi serves as the VP Operations and Performance Improvement at Christus Health Northeast Texas in Tyler.

Birjandi highlights the Christus talent acquisition program, ‘Christus SkillBridge Program’ that eases the onboarding through the guidance of corporate mentors who are giving back to our veterans, thus representing the connective strength of the military-to-civilian process as more and more veterans enter civilian service. In 2022, Christus had 60 veterans who applied to the program.

“We want to honor our veterans during every step of the transition process,” said Birjandi.

1SG Kandy Flores served in the U.S Army as a dental specialist retiring as a Recruiting Company First Sergeant who now serves as the Special Programs Coordinator for Carter BloodCare. With 23 years of training as a U.S. Army recruiter [12 years], Flores applied her credits toward a business marketing degree, which ultimately qualified her for her current position at Carter BloodCare.

Flores conducts countless presentations in Texas high schools to increase the awareness of the organization’s rewards of the Honor Cord program under the Student Programs & School Grants program at Carter BloodCare, awarding high school seniors who donate life-saving blood at least twice during the school’s blood drives.

During her deployment in Baghdad, Iraq, Flores was asked multiple times to transform the dental clinic into a blood donation site during critical need on the battlefield. “I have a clear understanding now of how incredibly important it is to have the blood available before it is needed.”

Emphasizing one of the U.S. Army’s seven core values: DUTY which represents ‘showing up for work at the right place, at the right time, in the correct uniform with a motivated attitude.’

Saving lives by making transfusions possible reflects the Carter BloodCare mission by applying the value of duty that our region’s veterans who continue to save lives — off the battlefield and into civilian health care for you and for me.

Today, Carter BloodCare is expanding services throughout ETX establishing one of the largest community blood centers in Texas.

As the largest health care expansion by VA standards in East Texas, the first primary care for our ETX veterans, Tyler VA Primary Care Clinic, opened in 2021, and led by operations administrator, Veteran Lehebron Farr, the primary care clinic offers optometry, physical therapy, radiology, MRI, expanded mental health services and primary care, nutrition services, and specialty service consults to our region’s Veterans.

While we know “everything is bigger in Texas,” extending the popular adage to “everything is bigger in East Texas” would not be off the mark.

Tyler-native Lt. Commander Michael Racs, DO, MBA returned home after traveling the world as a flight surgeon serving in the Medical Corps for the U.S. Navy in deployment medicine now transfers his exceptional attention to detail on the frontline of civilian health care for the high-quality organization of UT Health East Texas Physicians in Whitehouse as a family medicine physician caring for our newborn ETX natives and our region’s elderly with great respect as he cares for his elderly father in Bullard.

A testament to his ETX roots, the more Racs saw of the world, the more he missed home where his call to serve ETX families in a steady and stable profession since July of last year, navigating the turbulent waves of our nation’s health care system with the skill of a sailor. Making a point of he says, “fair seas never made a good sailor.”

UT Health East Texas offers him the experiences of learning and growing within the comprehensive aspects of managing a practice within a university setting including the administrative, corporate and academic.

With a good and steady stream of support from the UT Health network system, Racs is building the deeply invested long-term doctor-patient relationships in our community and is glad to be back home. “It’s a great feeling,” he said.

Highlighting the motto of the Military Officers Association of America [MOAA], ‘Never stop serving,’ U.S. Army ret. Lt. Col. Jim Snow qualified how the military-to-civilian dedication of service with the words, “just because we’re retired doesn’t mean we stop serving.”

It does my heart good knowing our region’s health care system is growing healthier as our veterans dedicate their civilian service representing our ETX health care professionals who dutifully deliver exemplary care while they continue to save lives and save costs in service to our region.

I’d like to hear from my readers about your health care experiences and how we can better improve to continue to shape the future of veteran care in East Texas at etxveterans@gmail.com