Healthcare Systems Vie To Keep Up With DFW's Growth While Remaining Flexible For The Future

The explosive population growth of Dallas-Fort Worth’s northern suburbs has created a dense, competitive region for the metro’s healthcare systems.

DFW had four of the nation's top 10 fastest-growing cities last year, and the region is on pace to overtake Chicago as the third-largest metro in the U.S. by 2035. That helps DFW check all the boxes required for medical services expansion, according to Chris Morgan, director at the healthcare investment firm Big Sky Medical. 

In addition to its meteoric growth, he said DFW boasts a business-friendly environment and an abundance of undeveloped land that many cities at the same scale and density don't have.

“It's really one of the top submarkets in the country for healthcare real estate,” Morgan said during Bisnow's DFW Healthcare Summit on Tuesday at The Hall on Dragon in Dallas.

However, Morgan said he’s uncertain how long the window for growth in healthcare systems will remain open as more hospitals and facilities open in the northern part of the metro. 

While there are 11 hospitals within 8 miles of the Cook Children’s Medical Center campus in Fort Worth, the healthcare system has expanded throughout the northern part of the metro in recent years. Cook Children’s Medical Center President Kevin Greene said growth has been intentional, as the system will eventually reach Sherman near the Oklahoma border. 

“We're looking at the entire region,” Greene said. “Where are we going to be positioned that's going to allow us to care for kiddos in Wichita Falls … in Ardmore, Oklahoma, or Louisiana, Arkansas — we get a lot of kids from East Texas.”

Baylor Scott & White Health System is also aggressively expanding in the region’s northern suburbs. The health system opened its $265M medical center campus last year in the northern part of Frisco.

But new hospitals are just one component of its expansion, Baylor Scott & White Health System Vice President Angel Benschneider said. The system also has a medical office building at The Star in Frisco, a 15K SF clinic in Prosper and a wellness clinic about to break ground in Celina. 

Those components each offer different services but allow the healthcare system to serve much of the 7-mile corridor from Frisco to Celina. 

"If you're up in the Celina-Prosper area, that's as significant as if you're in Chisholm Trail,” Benschneider said. “There is a need for us to expand to meet the customer base that we have in those areas."

The region’s population growth has led to the construction of megacampuses and microhospitals, with only 10 beds in the same corridors. Those can coexist because they serve patients in different ways, said Meagan Gibbs, HDR’s healthcare engineering area market sector leader. 

The smaller facilities allow patients to visit more frequently without traveling long distances, while the larger campuses offer more specialized services. 

Microhospitals can be seen as less intimidating for patients, and a portfolio of facilities of different sizes also reduces crowding in emergency departments, according to Benschneider.

But Texas is known for its massive size, and healthcare systems are living up to that with billion-dollar expansions. Yet size isn’t as much of a concern for future campuses as flexibility should be, Gibbs said. 

"Push them to be more flexible — have that universal room, have the opportunity to flex spaces as well as buildings to accommodate for future growth,” she said. “That's the one risk that I can see when we evaluate where we are in North Texas."

As healthcare systems work to keep up with DFW communities growing faster than anyone anticipated, Gibbs said they have to abandon rigid master plans and focus on living plans that offer more flexibility.

Greene said Cook Children’s Medical Center has done that by utilizing universal rooms that allow the hospital to flex up and down as its capacity changes.

To accomplish the living master plan that Gibbs suggested, Ryan Cos. Senior Vice President of Healthcare Development Jaime Northam said collaboration with all stakeholders is vital to successfully executing a new major campus. 

Engaging with the project’s design firm and the general contractor early in the process is important because they can identify issues that may be designed in and have cost implications or impact schedules. 

“Those are the sorts of things that you want to catch in the beginning … and come up with those solutions from the get-go,” Northam said.