College Well being officers plan on shifting specialty care and several other clinics to the shuttered CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital within the medical heart that might quickly turn into the system’s “Babcock Specialty Hospital.”
The aim is to decompress the quantity of sufferers at College Well being’s primary hospital, not too removed from the vacant CHRISTUS hospital.
College Well being entered right into a $71 million deal in July with CHRISTUS to buy its 45-acre Santa Rosa Hospital campus within the South Texas Medical Heart.
In April, the Catholic nonprofit hospital operator closed the placement, which had seen sufferers for 38 years, citing an “inside efficiency analysis.” The hospital’s closure got here with the lack of 174 inpatient beds and 479 jobs. CHRISTUS opened a brand new tower at its new Westover Hills hospital within the spring, which they mentioned changed the misplaced beds.
San Antonio has seen main hospital closures lately, together with the privately-owned Texas Vista Medical Heart (previously Southwest Common Hospital) in 2023 and the historic Nix Hospital overlooking the River Stroll in 2019.
On the similar time, Bexar County’s public well being system has grown quickly. The CHRISTUS buy comes amid College Well being’s $1.5 billion growth, which incorporates the development of two five-story hospitals on the Southwest and Northeast sides of San Antonio.
‘Bursting on the seams’
Roughly 10 years in the past, College Hospital averaged 458 sufferers staying in its hospital at any given time. That quantity has jumped to just a little underneath 800 sufferers in 2025.
Even in comparison with final yr, births have elevated by 36%, surgical procedures by 12% and emergency room visits by 9%.
That progress is being fueled by inhabitants progress throughout South Texas, extra folks touring from throughout the state for specialty procedures, and the opening of College Well being’s Ladies’s and Youngsters’s Hospital in 2023, which got here with 298 new beds.
College Well being will get about 10,000 calls in a calendar yr from smaller hospitals throughout South Texas for affected person transfers. However the hospital can solely settle for just a little over half of them.
“Each time we construct a brand new tower, it fills up,” College Well being director of exterior communications Elizabeth Allen mentioned. “We’re bursting on the seams.”
The previous CHRISTUS hospital is licensed for 154 beds and 20 intensive care unit beds. However the brand new facility isn’t prone to have that many.
College Well being’s Babcock Specialty Hospital will likely be targeted on outpatient visits and specialty care to liberate area and sources on the primary campus on 4502 Medical Drive.
College Well being has not determined which specialty companies and clinics could be moved to Babcock Specialty Hospital. However the primary hospital at the moment homes clinics targeted on diabetes and endocrinology, coronary heart and vascular care, organ transplants and several other pediatric specialties. It’s additionally a tutorial medical establishment, so lots of of medical faculty college students, many from UT Well being San Antonio, work within the hospital.
“We now have a inhabitants that retains coming to the hospital to get simply single exams … and that brings a number of automobiles and a number of congestion to our medical heart hospital,” College Well being president and CEO Ed Banos mentioned. “So we’re hoping that it will decompress the visitors and the parking calls for.”
Folks in wheelchairs and older of us additionally need to make an extended trek to some areas of College Well being’s primary hospital, which wouldn’t be the case on the former CHRISTUS constructing situated at 2827 Babcock Rd.
“We predict that that’s a way more handy, patient-friendly facility to do specialty outpatient work,” Banos added.
‘A herculean effort’
The acquisition is just not but remaining. Banos expects it to shut by September or October. As soon as it’s official, they should undergo a relicensing course of with the state.
The earliest the hospital may open is early 2026, however no agency date has been set. College Well being’s different two new hospitals which are underway are set to open in 2027.
College Well being’s buy will embody the shuttered four-story, 236,000-square-foot acute care hospital, two medical buildings, personal workplace buildings that may stay occupied, and a five-acre photo voltaic farm that CHRISTUS constructed however by no means acquired to make use of.
College Well being officers introduced their plans to county leaders throughout a Bexar County Commissioners Courtroom assembly on Aug. 5. Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert described getting all three hospitals staffed in a brief period of time as “a herculean effort.”
“I’ll say, in my entire profession, that is irregular,” Banos informed the commissioners. “You don’t see three hospitals opening up inside a yr, yr and a half of one another.”
Well being care jobs within the U.S. have largely bounced again from large losses in 2020 as a result of pandemic, in response to a College of Michigan analysis paper revealed in June. Nevertheless, expert nursing services and intensive behavioral well being facilities are nonetheless fighting the employees shortages that started throughout the pandemic, the examine discovered.
The Babcock Specialty Hospital will open with about 125 workers. The Palo Alto and Retama hospitals will open with about 450 new workers every.
“We’re going to get it performed,” Banos assured the commissioners.
