CHRISTUS Spohn Health System is undertaking a $325 million project to reconfigure two of its Corpus Christi, Texas, campuses and to improve how it delivers care in the South Texas region of Coastal Bend.
CHRISTUS Spohn's "PATH" project will renovate CHRISTUS Spohn Hospital Shoreline and consolidate inpatient services at that campus; and it will convert CHRISTUS Spohn Hospital Memorial into a family health care center. PATH, which stands for People and Actions Transforming Healthcare, began early this year and will be complete in 2018.
The project will add an inpatient tower; expand the emergency department; and improve chest, stroke and cancer services at the Shoreline campus. Shoreline will become a Level II trauma center as part of PATH; it currently is a Level IV center.
The emergency department at Memorial will close; and all inpatient services will be discontinued at that campus. Memorial's graduate physician resident program has moved to Shoreline. By the end of this year, CHRISTUS Spohn will transform Memorial into the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Family Health Center. That facility will offer primary care; wellness, prevention and education support; a lab; radiology; a pharmacy; care coordination services; and chronic condition management. The facility will be named for a South Texas physician and civil rights leader.
Currently, both the Shoreline and Memorial campuses have inpatient beds — combined, they have 419 beds in operation, including 86 subacute beds. After the reconfiguration, the Shoreline campus will have 400 acute beds and 12 new observation beds. The 86 subacute beds will be put into use at other CHRISTUS Spohn locations. The CHRISTUS Spohn Health System has six hospitals in the Coastal Bend region, including the Shoreline and Memorial campuses.
The PATH project also is expanding CHRISTUS Spohn's primary care offerings and ambulatory facilities throughout the Coastal Bend region and improving the way care is coordinated.
According to information from CHRISTUS Spohn, the PATH project is necessary because more care is being delivered in the outpatient environment. Statistics from the health system indicate that even though the local population is growing, fewer people are being admitted into hospitals. Additionally, analysis by the system reveals that about 16,000 of the 42,000 emergency department visits that took place at Memorial during one year were not emergencies and could have been treated at a more appropriate venue.
Information from CHRISTUS Spohn indicates that CHRISTUS Health's $275 million in funding for PATH is that system's largest-ever investment. CHRISTUS Spohn plans to secure donations to fund the remaining $50 million needed for the project.
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