The project broke ground in February 2022 and will consist of a seven-story, 569,100-square-foot hospital and two six-story medical office buildings totaling over 323,000 square feet. One office building will contain a cancer center with a linear accelerator, a breast center, and infusion and pharmacy areas, and the other will feature an orthopedics and sports medicine center and clinics, officials told Community Impact.
Prior to his role, Fulin was part of the leadership team that helped develop and open Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital in June 2017. The acute care facility is strategically located to meet the growing health care needs of the Montgomery County community and is designed to deliver comprehensive care close to home.
As vice president and chief operating officer at The Woodlands campus, Fulin's responsibilities included overseeing hospital operations and managing departmental leadership to ensure patient satisfaction and high-quality care. Additionally, Fulin had executive oversight of numerous service lines, including heart and vascular, endoscopy, orthopedics and sports medicine, neurosciences, and cancer services.
How did you get into the medical industry?
I kind of grew up moving around, so I was always the new kid growing up. My father worked for an international oil company. We moved every two to three years overseas as a young child. We lived in the Middle East and Mexico, but I call Texas and particularly Houston home because I had the opportunity to live here in between some of the other places.
I went to Penn State, and I studied biology and health policy administration there. And that's where I found my calling in hospital administration. I ended up losing my two grandfathers while I was in college, so it was a time for me that made me decide that a career in hospital administration was what I wanted to do. So I went on and studied at Texas Tech University, where I earned an [Master of Business Administration] in health organization management, and the rest is history.
It's been seven years now with Houston Methodist, and I feel fortunate. It's a wonderful organization, and we're committed to bringing unparalleled safety, quality service and excellence in everything that we do.
With the new hospital opening over a year away, what is your current focus?
A lot of what I'm doing right now is promoting who we are as an organization. We're excited to be able to continue to expand our presence in this community. For many years, we’ve offered primary care and specialist care, and we have a free-standing emergency center. We also have a breast cancer treatment and rehab center. ... So we're excited to meet the demand that the community has expanded access to high-quality health care and feel fortunate to be able to create jobs in the fantastic community of Cypress.
What does the recruitment process look like for the new hospital?
As we are working throughout this year, and then in 2024, we'll be hiring the team as we are currently in the process of hiring some of the key leadership folks. But when we open this hospital in 2025, we will create close to 500 new jobs in the community. So we're really excited about that job creation. Just to give you kind of a feel when we opened up The Woodlands hospital, we opened it up right around 500 total employees, and today, it has over 2,000 employees.
How large will the new hospital be?
We bought 105 acres right in the middle of Cypress, which was the old Sysco headquarters. We'll open up with close to 200 beds, and then eventually, it's master-planned for 500 beds. And we'll have breadth and depth of services, so comprehensive services are what we're looking to provide. We'll focus on services such as cancer, ortho neuroscience or digestive health just to name a few of the main services. ... We have a lot of surface parking now that's already existing that we'll really utilize right now in this phase of the project and then eventually build up to four parking garages on campus.
What new technologies will be incorporated into the new hospital?
We have a whole department of innovation that we created several years back, and it's a group of passionate individuals that want to change the way that we care for our patients and want to innovate and make things better. So every day, every week we meet and we talk about how we can really create that smart hospital of the future and what are those types of technologies that are going to make a difference and improve the safety, improve the quality and the overall experience when you're a patient at Houston Methodist. We will utilize AI technology, natural language processing and ambient technology in our patient rooms. It's an exciting time to be in health care.
What amenities and other features are planned for the location?
The new campus is going to be beautiful, and we really want it to be a medical home for the community. We at Houston Methodist recognize the importance that spiritual care and spiritual healing plays in the overall healing of the mind and body, so we're going to have a beautiful chapel and a wonderful prayer room. And for culinary options, we'll have a fantastic cafe and we will have an Einstein [Bros. Bagels] shop in the hospital as well. And the size of the new campus project ... allows us to also build out a multisportsplex that will have softball fields, baseball fields, soccer and football. So we're excited about that and hope the community is as well.
A health care hub
Houston Methodist is bringing a new hospital to the Cypress community.
Projected opening date: first quarter 2025
Location: 24500 Hwy. 290, Cypress
Project size: 105 acres
Beds at opening: 200
Planned beds: 500
New jobs at opening: 500
