Methodist Health System has opened a new facility in Grand Prairie that marks a new model for the company, as systems continue to rethink their approach to the physical spaces in which they deliver care across expanding North Texas.
The Methodist Convenient Care Campus combines an urgent care on the first floor with primary care on the second and specialists on the third. (Methodist has two other urgent care centers—Dallas and Mansfield—but both of those are standalone facilities.) Brass cut the ribbon on the 31,000-square-foot, $14 million facility on Thursday.
Methodist Urgent Care will have extended hours and be open every day. The primary care second floor will be home to Methodist Family Health Center, which is moving over from offices that needed some updating, Methodist Medical Group President George Williams told me.
The top floor will house cardiology, general surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedic joint specialists, pulmonology, and sports medicine. On the last, Williams says Methodist likes “the idea of being the go-to location for all the student athletes not only in Grand Prairie but in surrounding communities.”
Smaller, community health centers are an increasing part of the healthcare equation in North Texas and elsewhere. Some systems have gone the route of establishing smaller scale hospitals with a dozen or less inpatient beds, which generally come along with the added bonus of higher reimbursement rates. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has started to tighten regulations on so-called “microhospitals.” One area hospital had to close and the reopen as an ambulatory surgery center to meet the requirements.
Williams says the system considered a freestanding emergency room or microhospital model but landed on a large, multi-faceted ambulatory model instead.
“We feel, based on providing convenient care to patients with an affordable cost, the urgent care was really more consistent with what our organization has decided to do,” he says.
Williams adds that the parcel of land on which the new campus sits is large enough to account for as-needed expansion.
“We think the growth potential is really, very high,” he says.
