Children’s Hospital expanding to Texas

Down in San Antonio, an ongoing battle over a new children’s hospital is now winding down.

Representatives from the University of Texas have announced that a partnership between The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Vanguard Health Systems and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio will bring a new, freestanding children’s hospital to Texas.

The state-of-the-art facility “will provide students and medical residents with transformational educational and research experiences as future pediatric health care providers working in the region,” said UTHSC-San Antonio interim President, Kenneth L. Kalkwarf in a statement on their website.

According to the statement, Vanguard’s plan will align ambulatory clinics from all over South Texas and San Antonio, and streamline pediatric care by creating an electronic medical records system.

The San Antonio Business Journal reports that the decision to bring in Vanguard and CHOP was passed by a unanimous vote.

The decision comes after SABJ reported that the Christus Santa Rosa Health System planned to spend about $135 million to transform its downtown campus into the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. The nonprofit hospital system had already moved adult services off of that campus to accommodate those plans.

Philly.com reports that the “University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Vanguard Health Systems Inc., a for-profit hospital operator based in Nashville, Tenn., will pay for the proposed $350 million, 250-bed facility. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will help manage it.”