Health care providers in the Lake Houston area are building new facilities and expanding existing ones to meet the needs of the growing population and changing demographics. Some of the projects underway include a new patient tower and medical office building at Memorial Hermann Northeast, an expansion of a Kelsey-Seybold clinic, the addition of two floors in a Kingwood Medical Center tower and a new medical district in Valley Ranch, according to health care officials. In addition to expanding health care services, the projects will also create jobs for individuals in the health care industry—which is one of the fastest-growing job sectors in the Greater Houston area, said Patrick Jankowski, vice president of research at Greater Houston Partnership. According to a report GHP released in December, 11.11 percent of workers in the Greater Houston area are employed in the health care industry, which is up from 9.1 percent in 1992. “The number of jobs in the health care industry is projected to continue to grow at the same rate as population,” Jankowski said. “It has been one of the better performing sectors.”

Expanding services

Kingwood Medical Center is adding two floors to its three-story south tower, Chief Operating Officer Rob Marmerstein said. The fifth floor—which will open in July—will be fully built out and add 38 beds to the hospital’s intensive and intermediate care units, while the fourth floor will remain empty until the hospital has the funding and needs the space. When it opens, the fourth floor will also consist of 38 beds. In addition to the $35 million south tower additions, the hospital is spending about $2 million to add eight beds to its in-patient rehabilitation facility and about $3.2 million on a new MRI machine. With these additions, the hospital will increase its total number of beds from 373 to 419, Marmerstein said. “We continue to be very busy in our rehabilitation department,” Marmerstein said. “We’ve been probably over 75 percent [of our] capacity for the past six months and over 70 percent [of our] capacity for the last year or more. We have people in our community who need those services.” Meanwhile, Memorial Hermann Northeast is finishing two major construction projects on its campus, CEO Josh Urban said. The hospital is spending $70 million to build a new 90-bed patient tower that will replace an older, existing tower. The new tower has five floors, but patients will occupy the first four floors when it opens in December. “It has been a long time since the campus has had a major capital improvement,” Urban said. “In the older south tower, the rooms are smaller, and it just doesn’t meet modern, state-of-the-art standards. And [the fifth floor] helps position ourselves for future expansions.” Urban said the hospital is also building a four-story, 100,000-square-foot medical office building on its campus, which it will lease to physicians to treat patients. He said tenants will begin moving into the building in the fall. In addition to these facilities, the hospital is rebuilding its Kingwood Convenient Care Center on Kingwood Drive, which was set to open last August, but took in as much as 7 feet of water during Hurricane Harvey. The center consists of an emergency room, physicians’ offices, an imaging center and a therapy center for patients in rehabilitation. Kelsey-Seybold Clinic is also rebuilding a facility in Kingwood that was damaged last year during Harvey. However, rather than reopen in the same location, the health care provider is expanding its Kingwood clinic’s size and service offerings, Vice President of Operations John Lyle said. The previous clinic was 20,000 square feet, and the new clinic will be 55,000 square feet. Lyle said Kelsey-Seybold hopes to decide its location this summer and open the facility in 2019. Health care expansions are also planned in the northern portion of the Lake Houston area. In New Caney, real estate developer Signorelli Company  plans on building a medical district in Valley Ranch called Vivacity, said Thomas Wittenberg, executive vice president of the medical division. This 196-acre development—located near Hwy. 59 and the Grand Parkway—is projected to include hospitals, physician offices, pharmacies and other health care services. Wittenberg said the developers are working with prospective tenants interested in leasing land within the development. He said work could begin by the end of 2018 or early 2019. CHI St. Luke’s Health initially planned to open a hospital in Vivacity, but in May, officials said this was no longer the case.

Population,  Demographic changes

Health care officials said the region’s growing population is precipitating many of the health care expansions. In the seven Lake Houston area ZIP codes, the population grew from 154,473 to 292,120 from 2000 to 2016—an increase of 89.11 percent, according to U.S. Census data. “As the area continues to grow, the needs are going to continue to grow, and I certainly don’t want to be in the position where somebody comes to the hospital and we can’t take care of them,” Marmerstein said. The number of Lake Houston area senior residents is also rising. In the ZIP codes comprising the area, the portion of the population age 65 or older grew from 7.09 percent to 9.13 percent between 2011 and 2016, according to U.S. Census data. This growing number of residents age 65 or older has influenced the expansion of health care services in the area because residents who are 65 or older tend to visit hospitals, clinics and physician offices more often, Urban said. “Across the Greater Houston area, the baby-boomer population is growing quite a bit, and the people in that age cohort tend to have one or more chronic conditions, and they tend to be higher utilizers of heath care services,” Urban said. “So, I think as the population ages quicker around those cohorts, it’ll just drive more health care utilization.” Not only does the older population require more health care services, residents who are 65 or older also tend to need more specialized health care, such as services for the heart and brain, Marmerstein said. The extra beds Kingwood Medical Center is adding to its intensive and intermediate care units, as well as its rehabilitation center, will help address these needs, he said. “Part of having an aging population … there’s a growing need for cardiovascular, cardiology and neuroscience services,” Marmerstein said.

Job creation

As health care providers open and expand buildings, they are hiring additional staff members to work in the facilities. Marmerstein said the Kingwood Medical Center—which has 1,623 employees—is hiring another 80 people to work in its new tower. Meanwhile, Lyle said Kelsey-Seybold will also have to hire an undetermined number of workers to staff its expanded Kingwood clinic when it opens. The new medical office building at Memorial Hermann will create space for additional physicians to lease, but Urban said he is unsure how many doctors could fill the building. “It’s hard to estimate how many tenants, because sometimes a doctor comes in and leases 2,000 square feet and sometimes … a whole floor if they need the space,” Urban said. “But it will certainly allow the capacity to recruit providers in the community that will bring new doctors … and new jobs.” One local institution working to educate health care workers is Lone Star College-Kingwood, which has health care programs in three primary areas: nursing, respiratory therapy and dental hygiene, LSC-Kingwood President Katherine Persson said. The college has 210 students in its two-year nursing program, but that number will increase when, in 2020, the college plans to open a new health care building—funded by the college system’s $485 million bond package approved by voters in 2014, Persson said. The new building will create enough space for LSC-Kingwood to add 50 students to its two-year nursing program, 30 students to its one-year nursing program, 100 students to its respiratory therapy program and 18 students to its dental hygiene program, she said. “We know that we need more workforce training, and nursing is the largest need according to our labor market data,” Persson said. “We have an aging population, and there are huge needs.”