Despite the delay, other projects are still underway at St. David’s North Austin Medical Center, including a $52 million parking garage and $20 million emergency department expansion. These projects follow the women’s center expansion, which was completed in 2023.
“That campus, generally, has gotten bigger and busier,” St. David’s CEO David Huffstutler said.
The health care system’s investment also backs other ongoing regional projects, including hospitals in Kyle and Leander.
The overview
St. David’s HealthCare is moving forward with its $953 million investment in building or expanding its health care facilities across the Austin metro area, an initiative first announced in 2022 to address the region’s population growth and increasing health care needs.
The investment includes projects in Austin, Kyle, Leander and Round Rock. The system has completed a handful of these projects already, including expansions at its women’s centers at the North and South Austin medical centers.
One of the largest projects in North Austin is a behavioral health hospital, which was originally set to open in 2024.
Rising capital costs and interest rates have delayed the project and substantially increased the expected investment, Huffstutler said.
“To ensure that we develop a financially feasible and economically reasonable facility, we stepped back and looked at, ‘What are some other options there?’” Huffstutler said.
Officials also re-evaluated the size and scope of their future Leander hospital in 2024 due to the area’s growing population and need for access to health care specialties.
On the other hand
St. David’s completed its Women’s Center of Texas expansion, located at the North Austin Medical Center, in 2023. The project increased its neonatal intensive care unit size to 97 beds and added a 36-bed labor and delivery unit, a 24-bed antepartum unit, four birthing suites, an obstetrics emergency department and new cesarean section rooms.
There were 10,252 babies born at the center last year, said Peter DeYoung, chief medical officer of North Austin Medical Center.
"We’re running about 15% ahead of last year so far, so we anticipate we’ll break 11,000 deliveries this year,” DeYoung said.
Additionally, the number of babies in the NICU averages in the mid-70s, DeYoung said.
“We’re really thankful to have that space to accommodate them, knowing as we get busier in the summer we’ll have peaks well into the 80s and 90s,” DeYoung said.
Assessing the need
According to previous Community Impact reporting, the behavioral health hospital initially planned to provide mental health services for adolescents, adults and older adults, including 80 beds with the capacity for more in the future.
The project faces delays as St. David’s officials weigh whether to build the hospital on a site across from the North Austin Medical Center as originally planned or acquire an existing facility in the region, Huffstutler said.
St. David’s officials did not provide comment to Community Impact on whether the site near the medical center is still being considered.
“[The behavioral health hospital] is probably the one, honestly, that’s a little further behind right now and has a little less certainty to it at this point as some of the others,” Huffstutler said. “Although, we believe behavioral health services, and capacity for those, needs to be expanded in this community.”
Patients coming to St. David’s for mental health often need inpatient admission or to be placed in an outpatient program, Huffstutler said, but services like this are not “adequately available.”
Offering input
Austin’s population boom is fueling demand for medical office space, said Todd Stanley, senior vice president at health care real estate agency Practice Real Estate Group.
While large health systems typically build with fewer constraints, independent providers face more barriers, especially in areas such as The Domain.
In some areas, a 2,000-square-foot lease over 10 years could cost around $1.5 million, and a medical build-out could cost upward of $400,000, he said.
“It takes a special breed of physician to fill that [care] gap on their own, as opposed to the health care companies going out and doing that,” Stanley said.
Looking ahead
Investments at some St. David’s facilities are continuing amid some of the delays.
A $52 million parking garage project to add just under a thousand parking spaces is underway at the North Austin Medical Center, as well as a $20 million three-phase expansion of its “significantly undersized” general emergency department, the first phase of which could be complete toward the end of 2025, Huffstutler said.
A $188 million expansion project at the South Austin Medical Center, which could be complete by late 2027, will add a 24-bed inpatient rehabilitation unit, 36 medical-surgical beds, six new operating rooms and shell space for an additional 36 beds in the future.
The system’s two largest ongoing projects from the 2022 announcement are the construction of full-service hospitals in Kyle and Leander.
Last year, the system officially acquired land for a hospital in Kyle. Development of this hospital is likely to occur “much more rapidly” than the Leander hospital, which is still in the design phase and has expanded from 60 to 100 beds since the original plan.
St. David’s built a freestanding emergency room in Leander in 2018 with the intention of connecting it to a future hospital.
The Kyle hospital could follow this two-phase plan, but if construction of this hospital is prioritized, the emergency center and hospital would be built in tandem.
Officials said they are expected to have a decision within the next six months on which hospital will begin construction first.
