After years of ‘chronic’ bottlenecks, JPS gets started on a new hospital
JPS Health Network is breaking ground on two hospital towers, one of the most pressing needs of the aging public hospital system.
The construction will begin in the coming weeks, nearly eight years after voters first approved an $800 million bond to finance the hospital and numerous other projects.
“We are here today not just to break ground on a new hospital, but to fulfill a promise,” said Dr. Karen Duncan, the health system’s president and CEO. “Everyone in Tarrant County, no matter what their circumstance, their ZIP code or their story…they deserve access to exceptional and compassionate care.”
As a public hospital, JPS is partially funded by local tax dollars, and cares for a disproportionate amount of Tarrant County residents who lack health insurance and have limited means to pay for their care.
For years before voters approved the bond, consultants, hospital leaders, and county officials identified a new hospital tower as a priority for JPS.
The new hospital will bring more beds for patients. There are “chronic bottlenecks” in the JPS emergency room while patients wait for beds to become available, according to a report from 2018. These bottlenecks have forced JPS to transfer out hundreds of patients to other hospitals because they did not have enough beds.
“The size of these existing facilities do not meet the current demand and will certainly not be able to meet expected increases in future demand,” according to the report.
There are 582 beds in the existing hospital. The new towers will have 740 beds when they open, and capacity to have more than 800 beds, said Jill Farrell, the chief operating officer for JPS. In addition, the new hospital will have private patient rooms. Some of the rooms in the existing hospital are semi-private.
The new hospital will also replace the outdated and aging infrastructure of the existing tower, built in 1970. The mechanical and electrical systems for the hospital are “well past their usable life and minimally functional for any current form of use,” according to a long-range planning and facilities analysis done in 2017.
The new hospital is expected to open in 2030. The project was delayed, Farrell said, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the complexity of planning. Plans for the existing hospital tower are to be determined, she said.
In all, the update to JPS Health Network’s campus will cost $2.5 billion, which the hospital system is mostly financing through cash it has been saving for years, in addition to the $800 million bond.
Also included in the bond program is a psychiatric emergency center, which opened last year, a parking garage, a medical outpatient building, a central utility plant, and a neighborhood clinic. JPS leaders had originally planned to build four neighborhood clinics, but changed those plans to only build one.
