Texas hospital system acquires six emergency centers

St. David’s HealthCare has reached a deal to acquire six freestanding emergency centers in and around Austin, Texas, an area that is seeing rapid growth.

The Austin-based system announced a deal with ZT Corporate, the parent company of Altus Community Healthcare, which operates the six sites. The new emergency center locations began operating as St. David’s Emergency Center on Feb. 1.

David Huffstutler, president and CEO of St. David’s HealthCare, cited the growth of the Austin area as part of the motivating factor in adding the emergency centers. With the deal, St. David’s Healthcare will operate 13 freestanding emergency centers in the Austin area.

“As our population grows, local emergency rooms continue to see high patient volumes,” Huffstutler said in a statement. “These acquisitions are strategically designed to ease pressure on large medical centers and expand access to high-quality emergency care closer to home for Central Texans.”

Austin, the capital of Texas, is now home to about 1 million residents. The city has added more than 200,000 residents since 2010, according to data from the Census Bureau. The suburbs around Austin continue to attract more residents to the region.

The new emergency centers will work under the leadership of hospitals within St. David’s HealthCare. Each center is staffed with physicians and nurses trained in emergency medicine and are able to deal with patients suffering chest pains, stroke symptoms, burns, and traumatic injuries.

St. David’s HealthCare operates nine hospitals and more than 190 other healthcare locations in the Austin area. The system is part of HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital system, but works in partnership with two local nonprofit organizations: St. David’s Foundation and the Georgetown Health Foundation. St. David’s boasts $3.2 billion in revenue and employs more than 12,000 staff members.

The deal offers another example of the ways that hospitals and health systems are looking beyond acquiring other hospitals as they look to add services.

Anu Singh, managing director of Kaufman Hall, tells Chief Healthcare Executive® that he expects more health systems to look at transactions beyond acquiring other hospitals.

“There's a significant increase also in hospital and non-hospital partnerships. So hospitals with urgent care providers, hospitals with physician practices, hospitals with ambulatory surgery centers,” Singh says.

Ascension, the Catholic health system, announced a deal last year to acquire AMSURG and its 250 ambulatory surgery centers. Ardent Health, the for-profit system based just outside Nashville, has acquired more than two dozen urgent care centers in recent years.

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