St. David’s HealthCare is planning a $953 million expansion in the Austin metro area, expected to be completed by 2024.
The Austin-based health care system announced on Tuesday that it plans to add two new hospitals in the Texas capital’s suburbs, expanding the area’s existing hospital capacity and creating at least 900 jobs, according to Austin Business Journal.
The investment includes a pair of full-service acute-care hospitals in Leander and Kyle, priced at $142.5 million and $185 million. In addition to the hospitals, St. David’s has plans for a $33 million investment in an 80-bed behavioral hospital near its North Austin Medical Center. As part of a $145.9 million investment at the North Austin location, there will also be considerable expansion and renovation of the St. David’s Women’s Center of Texas.
The investment–including projects already underway or completed– marks the single-largest one-time capital investment since the inception of St. David’s in 1996. The landmark expansion was born out of a comprehensive evaluation of care conducted by St. David’s leadership about a year ago, wherein the company laid out plans to meet current and future demand, according to CEO David Huffstutler.
“This area continues to experience unprecedented growth,” says Huffstutler. “We’ve seen that over many, many years in Austin, but it has continued at an even faster pace over the past few years and we don’t see any evidence that that will change going into the future.”
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Huffstutler said the two new hospitals will enable “a level of service that we heretofore haven’t been able to do.” Williamson County and Hays County both grew faster than Travis County in the past decade and Hays County was actually the fastest-growing in Texas between 2010 to 2020.
St. David’s has also turned its sights to the other side of the metro area in Kyle where it is in the process of acquiring land for a 160,000-square-foot facility as part of the almost $1 billion in investments it announced. The $185 million project is expected to open in 2024 and create 200 full-time jobs. The Tuesday announcement also referenced $80 million for construction of additional future capacity at area hospitals needed to accommodate growth.
The announcement comes on the heels of Austin’s other major hospital network, Ascension Seton, which has announced more than $1 billion in investments in expanded facilities since mid-2020. The investments include expansions in the campus of Dell Children’s Medical Center and new facilities at the Ascension Seton Medical Center campus in Central Austin.
Huffstutler said that staffing has been a challenge during the pandemic, but the issue has become less severe as pandemic conditions improve. Texas is currently less than 60 percent vaccinated– 30th in the nation– according to recent Mayo Clinic data.
[Austin Business Journal] – Maddy Sperling