The Systems Expand

Much of today’s healthcare development is from large institutions growing into localized neighborhoods and offering care in a community setting, says FKP community market practice leader Gary Owens. For example, his team is working on Memorial Hermann’s Katy expansion (one of 13 campuses the system is enlarging around the metro). That project is a freestanding building that mostly serves the growth of Memorial Hermann’s neonatal ICU services.

FKP is also handling Texas Children’s new satellite campus in The Woodlands, which is being built on a 22-acre site due south of St. Luke’s. Gary says his team has just started initial planning, but it’ll be similar to Texas Children’s West Houston property and will include both inpatient hospital facilities and an ambulatory clinic. Texas Children’s director of real estate services Lisa Helfman (who will be reprising her role on our panel) tells us they started infrastructure work on January 31 and will launch construction in June. The outpatient MOB will open in late 2016, with the inpatient facility opening in spring 2017.

Gary offered up two more healthcare real estate trends playing out in Houston. One is the expansion into new services, like Texas Children’s Hospital Pavilion for Women. (Losing its partnering institution from the maternity care market drove the system to take on a whole new service line.) Second, everything’s getting bigger again. Although there was lots of talk before healthcare reform about shrinking footprints, it’s already cycled back. (We were hoping for it to shrink to the point of town doctors making house calls, mostly for the nostalgia.) Specific critical services (like neonatal care) are especially getting larger spaces.