Your first link, straight from the state says 3 in Houston. Ben Taub, Memorial, Texas Children’s. Texas children’s takes adults?
Anyway, that’s still not a lot for a city our size. Because its expensive as heck, they probably piggyback with the regular hospital to make it affordable.
Looks like we have idiots trying hard to look like wannabe bullies.
Yes, agree Houston seems to be short on Level 1 centers. One link
I came across said a population the size of Houston area should have 6.
Anyway, we can trust AI, right ?
Are you getting personal with me?
That’s silly. We’re having a conversation and everyone can jump in at any point, it makes sense that in a conversation if I’m responding to something a person said, I may want to use their name and address my comment to them as a rebuttal. It doesn’t necessarily make it some personal issue. Heck it could be done in agreement, or just to reference the statement the other person made. It all depends on context, really.
However that’s really far off from the original topic being discussed.
@rtcoog yes I am.
Sorry I missed your question.
Good question. It gets back into what is an adult 
They did during covid, but admittedly that was an exceptional event.
Then there is this reference .
Found other reference that pregnant women are covered, and some Children’s
hospital consider the age up to 24. So it all depends.
Harris County Hospital District has facilities all around the county. If you look at the following map, you’ll see Ben Taub and LBJ are pretty well-placed–both near the 610 Loop opposite each other.
The Med Center is a good location–near interstates, may use Hermann’s life flight when necessary, and the two hospitals are within the most densely populated areas (and likely highest uninsured areas) of the County. Ben Taub’s been where it is since 1963. Moving it out of the loop would make no sense.
HCHD has a number of other care facilities around the county to handle non-emergency care.
Harris Health System Locations
People in the suburbs are more likely to have insurance. There are many other hospitals already in the burbs, and all emergency rooms are obliged under federal law to stabilize anyone having emergency medical issues.
You keep the primary emergency care and hospital facilities where they’re most needed, which is where they are.
It is, but that doesn’t mean you should put every trauma center in it. The opposite is actually true. Centralizing critical care in a huge population area diminishes its effectiveness, and there are huge uninsured populations even in the outlying areas - just look at “suburbs” like Alief.
Those interstates are often a limiting factor to getting patients quick care. Beyond that, the population is spread out such that even Life Flight takes a while when patients are coming in from outside the Beltway and beyond.
There should be one somewhere on the east side, for sure. Ideally, others would be located around the Spring area and another out on the southwest side.
Remember, we’re not talking about generic “hospital facilities” - this is about Level 1 trauma centers, and the medical center area is adequately covered. They would build elsewhere if this was really about serving the population.
Mike,
DFW has 7 Level 1 Trauma centers compared to Houston’s 4.
5 in Dallas and 2 in Fort Worth. Houston should have at least
6. Would you propose putting 2 new Level 1 centers in
TMC as well ?
Land valued at $125-150 sqft. At the high end that’s about $58 million the 80+
descendants will be entitled too. All that to build 110 room patient tower.
Going from 11 acre campus to 8.9 acre campus seems ridiculous. I’m highly
doubtful they will abandon the original campus. They will keep all 20 acres, and then when next expansion is needed where do they go ? And where does the new
park land come from as the population in the area grows ?
I don’t think it’s silly when the topic of a post is a poster and not the OP especially when done in a derogatory or accusatory manner. IMHO
Maybe I should have provided the finer point and not been so vague. Hope that helps.
It makes more sense to me that this is proposed as a replacement. If they’re really planning to tear the old one down, that does give them some options.
The tract outlined in red is already city property. Why not expand there and move the “warehouse” to a place where real estate isn’t as valuable? They could take that site and propose to swap a portion of the park land (yellow) for expanding the park space to the area within the blue outline.
No.
First, I think the Metroplex is more populous than the Houston area, so it stands to reason there’ll be more health care resources in the former.
Second, I’m definitely not an expert on medical policy. I was only responding to the idea the Harris County Hospital District needed to move Ben Taub somewhere else. This sort of location is probably well-placed for Level 1 trauma cases. For less serious cases, the district runs many more clinics and less urgent care facilities around the county.
Third, it’d be great to add another couple of HCHD hospitals, but the County already spends (or collects taxes for) nearly $1 billion. The district spends over $2.5 billion in total in 2025. I just can’t see the County finding the money to open several more hospitals, much less several more Level I Trauma Centers. If the governor gets through some proposed legislation in this First Called session, it will likely be tougher to find the funds needed to expand.
JMHO, but I think HCHD’s plan was likely thoroughly thought through. The County (and HCHD and Flood Control) deal with these kinds of issues frequently, often through law suits. I don’t see this as a big deal–just the cost of doing business for the County.
BTW, here’s where I got my numbers:
08.01.24_non_confidential_fy25_budget_workshop_packet.pdf
Edited b/c wrong name typed in–otherwise unchanged.
Really, who is using that park? The med center employees to take their lunch? It’s cut off from the main park, and the closest areas are the Zoo boundary and the golf course. Not exactly connected to the rest of the actual park the public would use, the reflecting pool, hippy hill, the train, HMNS, playground equipment. I actually now, do think that its a good move by the county.
I’m seeing numbers of DFW metro at 8.1 million and Houston metro at 7.8 million
per Rice estimate. So yes they have about 4% larger population to serve.
Therefore DFW has about 1.17 million per Level 1 Trauma center vs Houston at 1.95 million. Yikes.
Again, if they’re not using it as a park, then it isn’t theirs. And they have city land that is already owned right next to where they want to take what would become privately-owned land.
This isn’t a case where the city/county would be taking private land out of necessity. They have other choices.
I’m curious about how much was spent in the most recent Ben Taub makeover and why they spent that money instead of expanding. It seems like it was pretty recent.
It appears, neither tract is “private land.”
In any event, if HCHD wanted the land owned by the city, it would still have to condemn the land if the city wouldn’t sell it, and that raises additional legal issues.
If the heirs have some sort of interest in the property that is compensable, the court will compensate them.
These kind of issues arise all the time. It’s really not a big deal and I’m not sure why some are so upset by this.
Yep.
“Harris County voters in 2023 approved a $2.5 billion bond package to pay for a multi-year facilities plan, including construction of a tower next to the existing hospital that would add 110 patient rooms.”
This comes from this article: Harris Health moves to seize Hermann Park land for Ben Taub expansion
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