Hospitals follow the population
As metro area spreads out, construction of medical facilities tries to keep up
NO one needs to tell a commuter trapped on any highway pointed toward the suburbs that Houston is really, really big and getting bigger.
But there it was: In January, Forbes magazine officially ranked Houston as America’s fastest-growing city, citing startling statistics about how the metro area’s population swelled by half a million people in four years and that 63,000 jobs are expected to be added this year. The city is growing so fast, in fact, that the Greater Houston Partnership said more than 400,000 homes were sold in the past five years. That translates to a house closing roughly every six minutes.
Such explosive growth, pushing the sprawl farther and farther out from the city’s core, has not been lost on Houston’s major hospitals. At least a dozen major hospital construction projects are underway across the metro area, either adding to existing facilities or breaking new ground.
The hospitals are spending more than $2 billion on the expansions and new builds.
“We’re just following the population patterns,” said Sid Sanders, senior vice president of facilities, construction and real estate for Houston Methodist. His hospital system, which ranks third in size on the annual Chronicle 100 list, is expanding or completing existing facilities in Sugar Land, Willowbrook and Katy, and is adding a massive 390bed patient tower at its Texas Medical Center campus.
Sanders says there is also a possibility of an expansion of the Houston Methodist St. John Hospital in the Clear Lake area.
That is in addition to a 193bed hospital in The Woodlands that is expected to open in June 2017.
“We’re just trying to stay ahead of the curve,” Sanders said, explaining that such enormous and expensive undertakings are not launched without hefty amounts of research into demographic projections and faith that those predictions will come to pass.
“We try to look into the future as best we can,” he said, “but that crystal ball can get pretty cloudy a few years out.”
Memorial Hermann (back when it was Memorial Hospital) was the first to cast its gaze outward. In the early 1960s, it picked a site near U.S. 59 and Beechnut.
“When we built it, there was nothing but fields,” said Dan Wolterman, president and CEO of Memorial Hermann Health System. “Now that location is considered almost inner city.”
Today, Memorial Hermann is the city’s largest hospital system with more than 3,500 licensed beds at 13 hospitals across the metro area. Expansions are underway at its Texas Medical Center location and those in Katy and Sugar Land. Its 14th and 15th hospitals are under construction in Pearland and Cypress.
Wolterman said existing facilities have been at or above capacity for almost a year.
“It is important to us to go where the patients are,” agreed Michelle Riley-Brown, recently named president of Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands. Previously she was president of Texas Children’s West Campus.
Between 2011 and 2016 the pediatric population is expected to grow 15 percent, to 380,000 children who live within 20 miles of The Woodlands hospital.
Riley-Brown said it was important to open a state-ofthe-art pediatric hospital in the north. She said 15 percent of patient families who go to Texas Children’s Main Campus in central Houston are coming from The Woodlands area.
Sometimes after a hospi- tal, opens adjustments have to be made to better cater to the community. When Texas Children’s Hospital in west Houston opened, there was no pediatric intensive care unit. But it became apparent the need was there, said Riley-Brown, so it was added. The Woodlands location will have 30 acute-care beds and 12 pediatric intensive care beds. It is scheduled to open in spring 2017.
But is there too much of a good thing?
The passage of the Affordable Care Act comes with provisions to keep people out of hospitals. There is some concern that the rush to construction may outstrip demand, especially if patient population begins to drop under the new law.
Wolterman acknowledges it is a balancing act. Seven years ago it was estimated there were about 102 patients admitted per thousand in population. Today it is 87 per thousand and could drop to 70 as admittance rates decline.
Still, he is confident that the steady population growth versus dropping admission rates will “mostly balance each other out.”
Sanders said building hospitals is different from building houses. If the entire medical facility is not needed immediately, it can stand vacant or operate with less staff until demand catches up.
“As long as Houston grows at any rate, then it’s just a matter of time,” he said.
He also does not worry too much about duplication of services with similar hospitals clustered together. “Think of Home Depot and Lowe’s. I go to them both. We look at it as giving patients a choice.”
“We try to look into the future as best we can, but that crystal ball can get pretty cloudy a few years out.” Sid Sanders, senior vice president of facilities, construction and real estate for Houston Methodist