The Dell Children’s Medical Center North Campus opened in April, and the new Texas Children’s hospital is set to open February 2024. Both facilities are located on Lake Creek Parkway, giving parents a choice on where to take their children when they need care.
“I expect the hospitals to have a great transformative effect on our community because it’s going to improve the health and well-being of children and families in our area, and even in surrounding areas,” said Mackenzie Kelly, Austin City Council member for District 6 and Northwest Austin native.
Both new hospitals will go in District 6, which includes part of the Williamson County area.
“As a mom of a daughter who is in her teens, having that hospital has the direct potential to give our community a higher quality of life,” Kelly said.
Digging into Dell Children’s
The Dell Children’s Medical Center in Central Austin opened in 2007. With almost 300 beds and over 500,000 square feet, the hospital has been the only dedicated children’s hospital in the Austin area since its construction, serving Central Texas and beyond.
The opening of Dell Children’s Medical Center North Campus marked the launch of the first pediatric hospital in Williamson County. With 36 beds, 187,000 square feet, and a variety of emergency and specialty services, this hospital will act as an extension of the existing Dell Children’s Central Austin campus, said Dr. Melissa Cossey, associate chief medical officer at the north campus.
“In growing the north campus, we decided that we wanted to focus on certain aspects of pediatric care, but not focus on some of the things that will need to be done at the central campus where you need some of those more specialized teams,” Cossey said.
For instance, specialized services in cardiac care will continue to be based out of the central campus due to its expansions in cardiac care resources in recent years, Cossey said. However, access to other specialties will still be provided at the north campus, such as neurology specialists, gastroenterologists for gut and nutrition care, pulmonologists for asthma and lung problems, and others. The hospital will also provide general pediatric; orthopedic; and ear, nose and throat surgery services. A neonatal intensive care unit is not planned for the north location.
Many of the medical specialists practicing at the central campus will provide care at the north campus, and much of the staff at the north campus has already worked at the central campus, Cossey said.
Although the facility was recently completed, the hospital plans to open a third operating room in the fall, followed by a fourth in early 2024, Cossey said. The hospital also has the capacity to eventually add an additional 36 beds, bringing the total to 72 upon build-out.
Taking on Texas Children’s
While Dell Children’s takes claim to the longest residency in Austin, the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston is the largest children’s hospital in the United States. Beyond Houston, Texas Children’s has 19 primary care practices in the Austin market, said Russ Williams, senior vice president of the Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin campus. The new facility being built in far Northwest Austin is the system’s first full-service pediatric hospital in the area.
“One of the primary reasons that Texas Children’s made the decision to invest in Austin the way that they have is that there were far too many children that we were seeing in Houston from Austin,” Williams said.
With 52 beds and about 365,000 square feet, the new hospital opening in February will offer a range of services for patients, such as a NICU, heart and brain surgery, full-service imaging and an emergency center, said Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, medical director of the new hospital. The hospital is also seeking the highest level of trauma certification for the emergency room and the NICU available in a hospital.
The hospital will also offer women’s services, such as high-risk maternity care and fetal intervention surgery, which operates on a fetus in the womb. An additional service the hospital will provide that is not offered by many hospitals is ECMO, a complex life support machine that replicates the work of the heart and lungs to allow the body to recover, Vartabedian said.
Along with a new hospital also comes the technological innovations to increase coordination between doctors in Austin and Houston to collaborate on diagnosis and care solutions, Williams said.
Another element unique to Texas Children’s is its approach to children with complex medical needs, Vartabedian said. Compared to some other systems that have private practices chip in to provide services for each individual part of a procedure or care plan, Texas Children’s has a more integrated system that will provide each of those services in one setting, Vartabedian said.
The hospital will create jobs for 149 doctors in the area and is still on track for its 2024 opening, Vartabedian and Williams said.
Choosing care
In terms of footprint, the new Texas Children’s facility will offer more beds than the Dell Children’s Medical Center North Campus, with 52 beds compared to 36. However, Dell Children’s has room to expand to 72 beds in the future.
The Dell Children’s northern campus will also offer more emergency room beds with 18 compared to 13 at Texas Children’s, but Texas Children’s will offer seven operating rooms, compared to the existing two at Dell Children’s north campus.
When it comes to choosing which hospital to take their child, parents have a variety of factors to consider, and care between facilities might not differ that greatly from a services standpoint, Vartabedian said.
“I think the scope of what we offer may not be hugely different than other folks around town, but I think the level of care and the level of service that we will deliver will probably stand above what patients can access now,” Vartabedian said. “We know we’re coming in with a smaller market share, and we have to earn that, and we’re ready to do that.”
Cossey said Dell Children’s Medical Center North Campus has the advantage of having another larger facility just down the street with more expansive services.
“If we don’t have some of the more specialized surgical services at that site, we have our sister site at the central campus just a few miles down the road,” Cossey said. “We’re able to connect with our central campus to provide the care that our patients need.”
Regardless of which hospital parents choose to take their children, Williamson County residents will stand to benefit, County Judge Bill Gravell said.
“Having excellent pediatric medical care close to home fills a need in our growing community,” Gravell said.
