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Freestanding facility to be located at Stone Hill

By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

Construction is now underway on the full-service facility that will slash the time it takes for Pflugerville resident to go to the emergency room.

Crews broke ground June 3 on St. David’s freestanding emergency facility that will open its doors in the Stone Hill Town Center as early as December.

“It will be essentially as if we expanded the emergency department at St. David’s North Austin Medical Center and we just so happened to put it there at the Stone Hill Center,” said Don Wilkerson, St. David’s North Austin Medical Center CEO. “It will function just as the emergency department does at St. David’s.”

The ER is the product of three years of cooperation between St. David’s, the Pflugerville Chamber of Commerce, the Pflugerville Community Development Corporation and the city of Pflugerville.

“Over the last four years, [localizing health care] has been one of our top three priorities,” Pflugerville Mayor Jeff Coleman said. “The Pflugerville Economic Development Corporation, with the blessing of the City Council, did a health care initiative study so we could find the hard, fast numbers to take to the health care providers and say there is a need and there is an opportunity for expansion into Pflugerville.”

The health care study PCDC conducted showed that St. David’s North Austin Medical Center was the hospital of choice for Pflugerville residents. Coupled with the urgent care facility St. David’s operates off of Grand Avenue Parkway, Pflugerville Chamber CEO Patricia Gervan-Brown said, St. David’s was a logical choice to extend the “Come Home To Shop” mindset to health care.

“You don’t have to drive more than five miles to either buy something, or get your health care. We’re a suburban-urban environment still kind of a commuter community, but when you’re here in Pflugerville you can shop, you can do all of your consuming here and that includes not only retail, but you can get health care too,” Gervan-Brown said.

Expansion of Pflugerville’s health care services does not stop with the ER. Stone Hill is also constructing a medical office building slated to open a few months after the ER is complete. Wilkerson said St. David’s will lease 10,000 square feet of that building to subletting to physicians, who can establish primary care and specialties practices like obstetrics and gynecology there.

“Think this is going to be very good for the community because we know the community is very interested in expanding the physician base in Pflugerville as well,” Wilkerson said.

Coleman said bringing specialty physicians to the city is essential to offering residents well-rounded medical resources.

“For the first time Pflugerville residents will have a place in town that if they have an emergency they will be able to take care of it immediately. Up until [highway] 45 and SH 130 came up, to get to any type of emergency service in Pflugerville was a 25- to 35- minute drive. With 130 and 45 coming, that cuts down to a 15- or a 20-minute drive. This is going to be a three- to five- minute drive for everybody. So it’s huge if we actually have residents who need some kind of care,” Coleman said. “Beyond that need for us having medical care, it’s helping us transform into that full service city that we’ve been trying to be… One of the pieces we did not have was expanded health care. So along with the emergency facility and the 10,000 feet worth of doctor’s office park that they’re creating also, it’s just going to raise the level of health care that we have available in town.”

As Pflugerville’s need for medical care facilities grows with its population, Wilkerson said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of one day bringing a hospital to town.

“The question of a full-service hospital there is always something to be considered, but it will depend upon the growth of the community and the need that’s there,” Wilkerson said. “Full-service hospitals are very expensive to build, develop and operate, particularly competing for employees and resources when you have large hospitals around. Bu that’s not to say down that line that there may not be something there and if it makes sense to do it, I’m sure St. David’s will want to work with the city to make sure that happens.”