New services include an intensive care unit, a cardiac care unit, a radiation cancer therapy unit, and complete obstetrics and gynecology care. We don't deliver babies here right now. The South Texas Regional Medical Center will continue to offer dialysis, hyperbaric therapy and physical, occupational, and speech therapy, which are currently available at the Tri-City facility. Hill declined to name which doctor groups are leasing space in the building, but said they include the areas of obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics, cardiology, radiation oncology, general surgery and internal medicine. In addition, hospital officials have even bigger plans to create a regional network throughout South Texas by developing family practice clinics in surrounding towns that would be associated with the planned regional medical center in Jourdanton, according to Hill.
Plans call for five or six locations in South Texas over the next three years.
We can create family practices in rural markets that don't have them and send specialists out to them. And then, when they need specialty care, these people will come to our facility. Constructing a larger facility, expanding medical services and creating a South Texas network will keep patients in South Texas, rather than forcing them to travel to San Antonio, Hill says. So many people, especially older people, who live in a rural market, if they can get what they need at home, would rather stay at home. It's just a matter of providing those services that they need.