With the May 6 opening of the third patient tower, Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas has more space and specialized services to offer Austin-area families, Dell Children's CEO Bob Bonar said.

The 72,000-square-foot facility has 72 beds, and features include an expanded and enhanced epilepsy monitoring unit and the first inpatient rehabilitation care center for children in Central Texas.

The new tower furthers the medical center's mission of providing high-end, specialized care in the Austin area, Bonar said.

"We've worked hard to build specialty pediatric programs that the community never had before," he said.

The third tower has a dedicated classroom team for long-term patients via a partnership with Austin ISD, the first partnership of its kind, Dell Children's Director Deb Brown said.

With a family business center, age-specific community rooms, on-site laundry facilities, family-friendly artwork on the walls and a sensory garden, the tower's design was intended to be a healing environment, Brown said.

"In a children's hospital, there is a far greater emphasis on tending to the whole family and not just to the patient," Bonar said. "Our hospital was designed from the beginning to do that, and our new bed tower has carried that [mission] forward."