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Booming population brings hospitals west to Katy
Posted: 12/09/2011
As the epicenter of Houston heads west, so too, have a number of major hospitals. In the past year, several new facilities have opened their doors to Katy residents seeking high-quality medical care without the long commute.
“I think the biggest thing was the substantial growth in those areas, as far as population and the areas that we’re serving. The population growth from now, just the five-year population growth is averaged at 12 percent,” said Wayne Voss, CEO of Methodist West Houston Hospital, which opened to patients on Dec. 17, 2010. “Once the patients start hitting that 55 and older age group, the demand for healthcare services goes up rather dramatically.”
A predicted 57 percent increase in the Baby Boomer generation, those individuals between the ages of 59 and 69, has also influenced CHRISTUS St. Catherine Hospital to begin planning an assisted living, skilled nursing and geriatric psychiatric facility on its campus, which opened in March 2000.
“Over the years, we’ve grown right along with Katy, doubling our bed capacity and growing our staff,” said CHRISTUS St. Catherine CEO Jack McCabe. “Katy ranks first in the nation as a high-growth area, according to a Gadberry Group study … many of the medical center facilities are looking at moving to the suburbs as the trip to the Medical Center becomes more difficult.”
McCabe credits high-ranking Katy ISD and the area’s proximity to the Energy Corridor for making Katy the new west Texas Medical Center. CHRISTUS St. Catherine paved the way for the availability of certain medical services in Katy, providing the first full-service heart program to the city. Now other big name hospitals are following suit.
As more families move into Katy, they seek pediatric medical care without the long drive, which is at least part of the reason that back in 2004, Texas Children’s Hospital began looking into opening its West Campus.
“We wanted to be proactive and meet the needs for this population,” said Michelle Riley-Brown, vice president of Texas Children’s Hospital – West Campus. “The one thing that wasn’t available [in Katy] was a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week pediatric emergency room.”
The West Campus, which opened in March 2011, has such an ER, fully staffed with board-certified pediatric emergency medicine physicians, without the 25-mile drive to the TCH main campus.
“When you think about a child who may need speech therapy two or three times a week, not having to drive that 25-mile drive two or three times a week really helps Mom and Dad,” Riley-Brown said. “We actually did the analysis to see what population of our patients at the Main Campus were coming to the West Campus, and across the board, it was 18 to 20 percent. So we already had a good market share from this area.”
The new TCH-West Campus, conveniently next door to Methodist West Houston, also has the advantage of being specifically designed and built for children, thanks to the help of advisory groups of former patients and their families.
The design’s bright colors are intended to lessen anxiety, Riley-Brown said. There are also video game systems in patients’ rooms and a book-and-DVD library.
As for expansion, Katy’s two newest hospitals are already looking to grow, using additional shell space that was strategically included in the original floor plans.
“We invested a substantial amount of money to allow us to grow quickly and meet the market demands, versus coming in with a smaller hospital and having larger projects and always being behind the demand curve,” Voss said.
The Methodist Hospital System invested $320 million in the construction of its West Houston hospital facility and medical office building. Voss said they hope to expand the Katy location’s birthing center and increase the number of medical-surgical beds to 193, up from the current 100.
TCH-West Campus has plans to open a conference center that can accommodate up to 120 people in the summer of 2012.
“We’re going to monitor activity and volume of patients that arrive here quarterly,” Riley-Brown said. “We built with shell space for the future growth of services … we’ll see which services are rapidly growing and keep up with that.”