DHR Health sets aggressive push to double kidney transplants after record year

EDINBURG — On Tuesday, DHR Health celebrated a record number of kidney transplants it performed over the past year by setting a goal to double that number in 2026.

In 2025, the DHR Health Transplant Institute performed 101 kidney transplants, a significant increase from the couple dozen of those procedures the hospital was performing in preceding years.

During a luncheon on Tuesday, DHR Health Transplant Nephrologist and Transplant Institute Medical Director Dr. Sridhar Allam said the institute aims to perform between 120 to over 150 kidney transplants next year.

DHR Health CEO Dr. Manish Singh set that goal even higher: he wants to break 200.

The staff in the room laughed when Singh said that, but Singh says he wasn’t joking.

“Well, that’s what I told them,” he said when asked if breaking 200 transplants is realistic.

DHR does appear to be transplanting fast.

According to Allam, half of the 101 transplants performed in 2025 happened in the last four months.

DHR also appears to have reached a higher number of transplants than the McAllen Medical Center’s South Texas Transplant Center, which previously filled a similar niche in the Rio Grande Valley.

It took that institution seven years to break 100 kidney transplants in total.

Transplant institutions aren’t cheap and don’t always last.

The South Texas Transplant Center, for example, shuttered in 2016.

“To start the program, you have to have an investment which is in the millions of dollars,” Singh said. “So the DHR Health partnership had to make that commitment, and they said, ‘Yes, we want to do that.’”

According to Singh, DHR had to assemble a 20-plus-person team of medical personnel to staff the program, luring doctors to South Texas when the program started in 2017.

“They are from all over the country,” he said about the medical professionals.

Singh isn’t sure whether DHR’s transplant institute has turned into a profitable branch of the organization yet, though he says that’s not really the point.

“We don’t know. We have not seen the numbers yet, but we are not in the complete red,” he said. “Because the intent of starting this service was not the bottom line, so as long as we are break even, we are still good.”

A kidney transplant, according to Singh, can cost a patient hundreds of thousands of dollars. Other aspects of needing a transplant can cost patients more financially and healthwise.

“It’s not the transplant per se that’s important. It’s the waiting period for the transplant for a long period, it can be for years,” Singh said. “And that has a very big indirect cost for the patient, and a lot of times when they are, say, scheduled to do it in Houston, it happens very fast, and they have to be there at the right time. So they lose their opportunity and go down the list.”

DHR says the need for a transplant facility in the Valley is particularly acute.

About 4,000 people in the Valley have end-stage renal disease and are on dialysis, DHR said. Organ donor registration in the area is among the lowest in the state.

Singh says he anticipates DHR to continue investing in its transplant institute. 

Eventually, he hopes to see pancreatic and intestinal procedures being made available. Within the next few years, Singh says, DHR means to start doing liver transplants — a service that will take a $10 million investment to initiate.

Ultimately, Allam told his staff Tuesday, celebrating over 100 kidney transplants performed represents more than a milestone in the institution’s history.

He said it meant giving people in the Valley the opportunity to celebrate more milestones in their lives.

“Behind every statistic is a story,” Allam said. “A mother who will be there longer for her children. A father who can potentially watch grandchildren grow. A son or daughter defying the expectation of a shorter lifespan than their parent. A stronger community where no one leaves the Valley for care.”