The number of health-care facilities in Austin, Texas, is ascending almost as fast as its population.
Ascension Seton will build an eight-story building at its central Austin medical campus, the Austin Business Journal reported. The building will be a center for advanced clinical services for women’s health, academic programs and subspecialty expertise. It also will increase patient capacity at Ascension Seton Medical Center, which is part of the St. Louis-based Ascension health care system.
The 282,000-square-foot building will replace a parking garage at an intersection on the campus. Ascension Seton plans to replace that garage in another location as well as building more parking structures at the medical center.
The building will have 28 in-patient beds for women’s clinical services, capacity for about 7,500 deliveries, private neonatal intensive care unit rooms, C-section suites, a dedicated obstetrics/gynecology emergency department, antepartum space, areas for minimally invasive gynecologic surgeries and a teaching/learning center. Ascension will spend $320 million on the structure.
Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin has 521 beds, more than any other hospital in Central Texas, reported ABJ. It had 17,620 in-patient admissions in 2020.
Ascension Seton wasn’t ready to announce naming rights for the new building. The company will launch a fundraising campaign for the expansion of women’s health services at the campus in the fall.
Ascension Seton added a comprehensive fetal care center and specialized delivery unit at Dell Children’s Medical Center in the city’s Mueller community. In 2020, it announced a $700 million expansion investment that includes a new Dell Children’s center in north Austin.
The opening of the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 spurred a wave of health-care-related development in many parts of the city, including the central Austin, north Austin and Mueller facilities and the Dell Seton Medical Center on the UT campus.
Construction on the tower is expected to begin this fall.
[ABJ] — Cindy Widner