Hospital to add to health-care scene in Pearland
South of the Texas Medical Center, just across the Brazoria County line, Pearland Mayor Tom Reid sees another medical hub emerging. He jokingly calls it “Medical Valley,” Pearland’s own Silicon Valley for health-care providers.
When it opens March 29, Memorial Hermann Pearland Hospital, 16100 South Freeway, will be the latest health-care provider to open in the city, offering catheterization labs, operating rooms and a helipad.
“That area has become so medically oriented with all of the programs and facilities near,” Reid said. “The hospital gives us a tremendous tool to make Pearland a destination city.”
This comes at a time when medical supply providers have flocked to the area.
Last year, the Hospital Corporation of America opened the city’s first full-service hos- pital, Pearland Medical Center.
The Houston Methodist Primary Care Group also started construction on a 46,000-square-foot primary care practice to be called Pearland Medical Commons that will open later this year according to the Pearland Economic Development Corp.
Before that, Houston Methodist opened an emergency room in Pearland in 2014. In 2013, Kelsey-Seybold opened its administrative headquar- ters and a new medical office building in the city, and Pearland Surgery Center opened in 2012. Room for growth
Memorial Hermann Pearland’s $116 million, 250,000-square-foot facility was built with an infrastructure capable of doubling the number of people it can serve, CEO Mario Garner said.
“The hospital was built with
the idea of it becoming a medical system,” he said.
City officials expect the hospital to draw more medical-service providers such as clinics and physicians offices, as well as patients from Alvin, Friendswood, Iowa Colony, Manvel and Pearland.
“It’ll help the office market, too,” Pearland Economic Development Corp. president Matt Buchanan said. “Companies will want to be located near the hospital; so we could see a cluster of medical providers (moving) in proximity to it.”
The hospital will create 350 jobs by 2017, according to Glenn Willey, the hospital’s communications director.
Fitting in the community
Garner and half of the hospital’s 265-member staff are Pearland residents.
The hospital will partner with high schools like Dawson, Pearland, Turner and Shadow Creek Ranch to help train students in health occupation programs, Garner said.
On a wall outside its chapel and gift shop, the hospital features a timeline graphic that depicts leaders from Pearland’s past and highlights the 2010 Pearl and High School state championship football team and the Little League team that finished third at the Little League World Series last year.
Thehospital will start as a 64-bed facility. The company previously operated a convenient-care facility providing emergency services on the site. It will function as an emergency department for the hospital, Willey said.
“We know there’s aneed in the community,” Willey said. “The volumes we’ve seen in our existing con- venient-care center on the Pearland medical campus, have far exceeded projections. We have people already coming to the hospital hoping we’re open.”
Reid said the hospital owns about 50 acres by FM 518 and Texas 288, adding there’s a “considerable amount of land left to expand.”
For more information about Pearland’s Medical Complex, visit www.memorialhermann.org or call 713-222-2273.