Health care providers are investing millions of dollars to provide greater accessibility to Woodlands-area residents as they work to meet the demands of a growing population.
The September 2013 announcement of a new Texas Children's Hospital campus, a new Kelsey-Seybold clinic, as well as the expansion of the Memorial Hermann The Woodlands and St. Luke's The Woodlands hospitals, are addressing the growing demand.
Experts said population growth, a longer life expectancy, growing numbers of uninsured patients and a strong economic market are factors driving health care expansion in The Woodlands market.
"It is a very strong market, a hot market you might say, in terms of job growth and population growth," said Steve Sanders, CEO of Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital. "You are going to see a lot of health care providers that are going to have an interest in establishing a presence in this area."
The 2 million residents living within a 25-mile radius of The Woodlands spent just under $3.5 billion on health care in 2013, according to data provided by Esri, a geographic information systems company.
Esri projects that same population will grow to 2.2 million by 2018.
While vast and highly specialized services are available to Houston Metro residents at the Texas Medical Center near downtown, community hospitals emphasize outpatient services to accommodate patients who require access to care on a weekly or monthly basis, St. Luke's The Woodlands Hospital CEO Debra Sukin said.
Sukin said patients frequently accessing services for chronic ailments want to live and work in the same community as they receive treatment.
"I think about children and adults who have neurological disorders which require ongoing health management issues," she said. "I think of people that have heart failure and diabetes, or individuals who are diagnosed with cancer and need to have radiation treatments."
Memorial Hermann expansion
Population growth, coupled with technological advancements, allows hospitals to bring services typically found at medical centers to community locations, Sanders said.
"For example, robotic surgery—something like that would traditionally be housed in a medical center setting, but today many hospitals in the community have robotic surgery," Sanders said. "It's those kinds of technologies that are coming out into the communities that maybe years ago it would have stayed in a medical center setting because it is very expensive technology."
The hospital recently opened a Joint Center to keep pace with longer life expectancies, Sanders said, as well as a Texas Institute of Rehabilitation and Research unit to offer higher levels of rehabilitation for issues such as spinal cord and brain injuries.
"Joint replacement is going to be a continually growing part of our population in terms of needs," Sanders said. "As people grow older, people are going to live longer, and they want to live healthier lives."
Sanders said Memorial Hermann is considering bringing one of its convenient care centers—which typically deliver an emergency room, imaging, lab and primary care services in one accessible location—to The Woodlands area.
"In terms of our surgery centers and our imaging centers and emergency centers and sports medicine rehab centers, we probably have close to 200 different locations in the Greater Houston area," Sanders said. "Then Memorial Hermann is developing what we call convenient care centers. We have a strategy in our system to develop those. We do have one in mind for this area."
St. Luke's uninsured initiatives
One of the biggest challenges facing Montgomery County providers is giving care a growing uninsured population, especially with the absence of a county hospital, Sukin said.
St. Luke's hospital aims to meet those needs by opening a new primary care clinic, the Bridge Clinic, for uninsured residents in May. The clinic is paid for through a Delivery System Reform and Incentive Payment grant received through a Medicare and Medicaid services waiver, Sukin said.
The clinic will be modeled as a medical home, where a primary care physician acts as a guide through the medical system to ensure patients get the care they need. Sukin said the model would bring continuity of care to a population who tends to rely on emergency room visits as a primary means of care.
"Your physician is going to do everything to basically direct you to the right place for care at the right time," Sukin said. "The emergency department is not a medical home; there is no continuity of care."
Additionally, St. Luke's is expanding its services in The Woodlands this year by adding 58 inpatient beds, two dialysis suites and continuing its focus on stroke treatment, Sukin said.
Texans Children's new campus
Texas Children's Hospital is using the experience it gained from developing its West Campus in Katy to offer a wider range of services when it opens its new pediatric campus in The Woodlands in spring 2017, Senior Vice President Mark Mullarkey said.
The nearly 550,000-square-foot campus will feature inpatient and outpatient services, diagnostic services, critical care, and acute care inpatient services, and about 25 pediatric sub-specialties, Mullarkey said.
The campus will open with six to seven more specialties than the West Campus, while also offering a comprehensive sports program and an intensive care unit within the first year of operation, Mullarkey said.
"Right now the pediatric population [in The Woodlands area] goes over 470,000 children 18 and under," Mullarkey said. "It's really incumbent upon us to be able to bring [research and services] to these geographies where right now those children may not have that access."
Mullarkey said the hospital partners with Scott and White Healthcare and Children's Hospital of San Antonio to create a network of strategic partnerships that can provide expensive and technical services to outlying communities without duplicating resources.
Mullarkey said the partnerships reduce cost by not duplicating expensive programs, such as congenital heart and cardiovascular programs, at nearby locations.
"Those are extremely high cost, they are very highly technical," Mullarkey said. "So when we have the collaborations in place, and if they find those patients at those outlying areas, we are able to provide [service] for them."
Kelsey-Seybold's investment
Kelsey-Seybold Clinic is also expanding its efforts throughout the Houston area with a $200 million capital investment plan, and it will open a new $30 million location in The Woodlands by year's end, Vice President of Operations John Lyle said.
The Woodlands facility will allow the current clinic, adjacent to St. Luke's The Woodlands hospital, to expand its services and add physicians and staff, Lyle said.
While obstetrics and gynecology services will remain at the clinic's current facility, the new clinic will include neurology, urology, rheumatology, orthopedic, sports medicine, podiatry, optometry and ophthalmology to its list of services already available in The Woodlands.
Lyle said the clinic is considering additional Woodlands area expansion, largely because of expected population prompted by commercial development.
"Like everybody else, we recognize the impact that ExxonMobil and Anadarko has had," Lyle said. "When you have over 100,000 people that live in a particular region, health care services are absolutely needed to meet the needs."
