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Posted Jun 12, 2007, 11:27 PM
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Austinite
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Austin.TX.USA
Posts: 4,624
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A new women's hospital has been announced for the rapidly urbanizing North Burnet/Domain. This is adjacent to St David's North Austin Medical Center along Mopac, between Duval and Parmer. Design allows for an 8-story expansion.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/06/12/12stdavids.html
St. David's gives women's health $100 million boost
Core of plan is new $82 million hospital at St. David's North Austin Medical Center.
By M.B. Taboada
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
St. David's HealthCare System will announce today that it will build a hospital dedicated to women's services in North Austin, the centerpiece of a $100 million-plus investment in women's health services.
The new facility will more than double the capacity at St. David's North Austin Medical Center for surgery for women, delivery of babies and intensive care for newborns.
The new hospital will cost $82.7 million, and St. David's also is spending $9.5 million to renovate its obstetrics facilities and add 17 bassinets for newborn intensive care at its main hospital on 32nd Street near Interstate 35.
In Round Rock, St. David's will spend $1.4 million to expand intensive care facilities for newborns.
"This $100 million investment is the single largest investment for women's services ever in Central Texas," said Jon Foster, CEO and president of St. David's HealthCare.
About 100 jobs, primarily nursing and ancillary services, will be created in the first year to support the $82 million construction and renovations at the North Austin center.
As part of the expansion, the eight doctors in the Austin Area Obstetrics, Gynecology and Fertility Group, one of the area's biggest women's health practices, will move to the first floor of the new hospital.
"If you have one hospital dedicated to one specialty, then that hospital becomes very good at providing that service," said Dr. Robert Cowan, one of the physicians in the group. "One of the most exciting parts is that the doctors are going to be immediately accessible to their patients. They'll be seconds away from their bedside so we can respond to emergencies immediately."
The Renaissance Women's Group and the Austin Diagnostic Clinic OB/GYN already are across from the St. David's North Austin Medical Center, off MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) south of Parmer Lane.
Groundbreaking on the hospital will occur in July or August, with completion by March 2009. The new hospital will open with three stories totaling 177,000 square feet, including about 6,000 square feet of retail space dedicated to selling items for female patients. It also will have a women's imaging center and will accommodate a future outpatient surgery center.
The new facility will have 37 labor, delivery and recovery rooms; 61 postpartum rooms, six operating rooms for cesarean sections and 36 neonatal intensive care unit bassinets.
The design allows the facility to be expanded to as many as eight floors and 377,000 square feet, and $8 million already has been earmarked for a future fourth floor.
Area doctors said the expansion is needed as the St. David's system delivers more babies annually than any other Central Texas hospital system.
"Right now, St. David's Medical downtown has more births than any other hospital in Central Texas," said Dr. Jeffrey Youngkin, chief of staff at St. David's Medical Center. With continued population growth, "there's a need for more hospitals in different places."
Last year, 12,586 babies were delivered in the St. David's system. With more doctors delivering babies at St. David's hospitals and population growth, the system forecasts that deliveries will approach 17,000 in 2010. That will mean a proportionate increase in newborns who need intensive care.
At the Seton Family of Hospitals, births rose about 5 percent last year to 9,369. Seton is expected soon to announce plans to expand the women's care services at its main hospital in Central Austin. Seton also will operate the new Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas, which will open June 30 and will have expanded newborn intensive care facilities.
When it opens in early 2008, Seton's Round Rock hospital will accommodate up to 2,200 births annually.
"Women's care services will be a big part of that hospital," said Chuck Durant, chief operating officer at Seton Northwest Hospital.
The St. David's facility won't be the area's first hospital for women. In 1997, the Renaissance Women's Group opened such a hospital on Bee Cave Road, but the company that owned it closed it less than four years later because it was losing money.
Renaissance was a free-standing hospital, but St. David's will be attached to one of the largest hospital networks in the area and has multiple physician groups associated with it, said Richard Hammett, senior vice president of strategic planning and development for St. David's HealthCare.
"I really don't anticipate any of the difficulties that the Renaissance Center encountered," said Byron Darby, a physician with the Renaissance Women's Group. "I think this is a very good time to do this. . . . The demand is there. The current hospital is bursting at the seams."
[email protected]; 912-2942
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from Austin Business Journal
http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2007/06/11/daily9.html?surround=lfn
St. David's women's hospital on tap for N. Austin
Austin Business Journal - 9:26 AM CDT Tuesday, June 12, 2007
St. David's Healthcare will build a new hospital dedicated to women's services in North Austin, as part of a $100 million investment towards women's and neonatal care.
The new 377,000-square-foot hospital, scheduled to open March 2009, will be constructed at St. David's North Austin Medical Center and cost roughly $82 million. The hospital system is also spending $9.5 million to renovate the obstetrics unit at St. David's Medical Center and $1.4 million in its Round Rock Medical Center to expand its newborn intensive care unit.
St. David's CEO Jon Foster says the number of babies born at St. David's hospitals has grown to nearly 12,500 annually.
"We fully expect this growth trend not only to continue but to escalate," Foster says. "This investment will allow us to significantly grow our capacity to continue to provide exceptional facilities for our physicians and their patients."
Foster says St. David's has invested more than $600 million in Central Texas health care facilities and expansions in the last 10 years, including this latest plan to build the women's hospital.
Seton Family of Hospitals plans to open the doors to its new Dell Children's Medical Center later this month. The $134 million hospital will have 170 beds.
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Austin.Texas.USA
Home of the 2005 National Champion Texas Longhorns
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