HCA Healthcare’s Gulf Coast Division will open a freestanding emergency services site on July 17, according to a press release.
HCA Houston ER 24/7 will be at 6191 E. Sam Houston Parkway North in the New Forest Crossing shopping center off Beltway 8 near Highway 90. It will occupy a 5,625-square-foot space that used to house a CHI St. Luke’s Health-Baylor St. Luke’s Emergency Center location, HCA Gulf Coast spokeswoman Debra Burbridge confirmed.
A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held July 16 from noon to 2 p.m. In addition to emergency physicians, the new center will offer access to on-call specialists, on-site testing and imaging, and direct admission to a hospital if necessary, per the release.
HCA is opening the new ER to help fill a gap left when East Houston Regional Medical Center closed.
“The Gulf Coast Division is committed to providing emergency services in the east Houston area and has been for more than 40 years,” Gulf Coast Division President Troy Villarreal said in the release. “Unfortunately, Hurricane Harvey destroyed East Houston Regional Medical Center, leaving many people in the area without a nearby, easily accessible place to seek medical attention in case of an emergency.”
The hospital, at 13111 East Freeway on the Bayshore Medical Center campus, was evacuated on Aug. 25 in preparation for Harvey and was flooded with nearly 6 feet of water during the storm, according to a letter to the Texas Workforce Commission and a press release. The hospital never reopened, and HCA announced in November that it would close for good. Floodwaters from Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 and Hurricane Ike in 2008 also had significantly damaged the hospital, which factored into the decision to close.
Now, demolition of the facility is scheduled to begin in late July, Burbridge told the Houston Business Journal. An exact timeline for the entire process has not been determined. Houston-based Cherry Cos. is working on the demolition.
Pre-demolition work currently is underway and includes removing usable equipment and materials from the hospital, Burbridge said.
HCA Healthcare’s Gulf Coast Division owns the East Houston Regional Medical Center building and its land, but the company is still considering several options for the property’s future, Burbridge said.
According to Harris County Appraisal District records, the hospital’s 6.7-acre property includes 212,117 square feet of buildings, most of which were remodeled in 2016. In 2017, the property was appraised at nearly $27.68 million, but the 2018 appraisal dropped to less than $9.26 million, per HCAD.
HCAD records show two smaller tracts of land also listed at 13111 East Freeway, at least one of which is also owned by HCA. That 1.25-acre tract doesn’t have any buildings listed on it and was appraised at $334,316 for 2018. The third tract has a 31,054-square-foot building on nearly 0.27 acres, and its appraised value dropped from $1.4 million in 2017 to $307,509 in 2018.
HCA Healthcare Inc. (NYSE: HCA) is based in Nashville, Tennessee. A little over a year ago, HCA announced it would buy three Houston hospitals from Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. and one from Franklin, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems Inc. Those deals made HCA Gulf Coast the largestHouston-area health care system, based on its 4,110 local licensed beds as of September 2017.
HCA Healthcare Inc. reported $43.6 billion in revenue for 2017, up about 5 percent from 2016, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As of Dec. 31, the company had about 253,000 employees nationwide.
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