St. David’s buys Forest Park hospital

St. David’s HealthCare announced May 13 that it purchased the nearly 150,000-square-foot Forest Park Medical Center Austin for $115 million.

St. David’s President and CEO David Huffstutler said the site will help accommodate growth at the St. David’s North Austin Medical Center. The purchase price includes almost 9 acres of land and the adjacent 80,000-square-foot medical office building that St. David’s will use for some of its activities and also lease to other physicians, Huffstutler said.

St. David’s anticipates opening the new campus in four to six months. In that time St. David’s will hire about 130 employees to staff the new facility and get state licensing, Medicare certification and accreditation, he said.

Similar to the original intent of FPMC Austin, the campus will be an elective surgical facility, meaning surgeries will be planned in advance. The campus will have an emergency department, but if any patients need more complex care, they will be transferred to St. David’s NAMC, Huffstutler said.

“We will typically do surgical procedures that do not require a lot of significantly complex sub-specialty support,” he said. “We would not have patients that would require extended intensive care unit stays or significant multiple sub-specialists to support their care.”

St. David’s will spend about $20 million to furnish and equip the hospital, which is currently vacant. In total St. David’s will spend about $275 million in Central Texas health care infrastructure during the next two years. Funding for the purchase of FPMC Austin and other infrastructure comes from operating expenses, and St. David’s will not incur any debt, Huffstutler said.