Texas Children’s Hospital proposes facility in The Woodlands 

Texas Children’s Hospital has proposed a new children’s health center that could open in The Woodlands in 2017. If approved, construction is scheduled to begin Jan. 31.

The board of directors will vote on the building in November but already has approved the purchase of more than 22 acres next to St. Luke’s The Woodlands Hospital at Interstate 45 and Texas 242. Texas Children’s Hospital has owned 50 percent of the land since 2007 and purchased the remainder from St. Luke’s Sept. 10.

Lisa Helfman, director of real estate services for Texas Children’s, said they will model the design and function of the facility after their campus in Katy. Having “taken a lot of lessons” from the Katy facility, Helfman said the hospital will build a larger emergency room in The Woodlands, with the project still “in the design phase.”

“We are focused on providing the services that The Woodlands community needs, and so that’s why we’re being very thoughtful about the process as we design the building,” she said.

Texas Children’s already has a presence in The Woodlands, staffing St. Luke’s emergency room and managing the neonatal intensive care unit in addition to four pediatric practices.

“We’ve been on the ground a long time there, so we can kind of gauge from the services we’re providing what the community needs,” she said.

She said Texas Children’s is deciding whether to build its own neonatal intensive care unit and may continue to manage that of St. Luke’s.

And while Helfman said there will not be a “formal partnership” between the two hospitals, “you can expect us to continue the relationship,” she said. “We’ve been partnering with them on a lot of initiatives in the past, so we continue to see them as a partnership.”