Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Waxahachie broke ground last week on a $240 million project that is part of a multi-phase campus expansion. The multi-floor patient tower will include an expanded emergency department, surgery department, intensive care unit, imaging, and multilevel parking garage.
North Texas’ rapid growth is often linked to the northern suburbs like Frisco and beyond, but Waxahachie is experiencing its own population boom. WFAA reported that the city saw an additional 130 new residents per month in 2022, double the rate the year prior. A recent bond approved the construction of new elementary and high schools, and the population has grown from less than 40,000 before the pandemic to nearly 50,000 in 2024.
BSW Medical Center – Waxahachie President Will Turner took the helm in 2019 and has been with the system since 2012. Baylor’s latest expansion will add more capacity for a quickly expanding region. “The number of patients we have seen at our hospitals and clinics has increased by more than 40 percent in the last five years, and this expansion demonstrates Baylor Scott & White’s commitment to meet the current and future needs of those we serve,” Turner said.
The six-story patient tower will be adjacent to the existing tower and include an expanded emergency department space with more room for imaging, surgical services, NICU, labor and delivery, and a multilevel parking garage. The added real estate is needed for the quickly growing region. In the last five years, the hospital has increased its outpatient load by more than 53 percent, inpatient visits have grown by 41 percent, and births have increased by 25 percent.
The hospital was built in 2014 and became a Level IV trauma center in 2019. Last year, the Waxahachie facility expanded with the Baylor Scott & White Heart and Vascular Hospital – Waxahachie, an extension of the nonprofit system’s heart and vascular hospital in Dallas.
That facility is Waxahachie’s first hospital dedicated to the heart and cardiovascular system and is a 30,000-square-foot stand-alone structure on BSWH’s existing Waxahachie campus. It includes an outpatient nursing unit, 12 patient rooms, two hybrid catheterization labs, a pre-and post-catheterization lab area, physician offices, a family waiting room, and a conference room.
The system also opened an urgent care facility in the area in December, and the hospital will host its first medical residents in July.
“With no shareholders, not-for-profit health systems such as ours invest 100% of surpluses in new and improved facilities, technology, lifesaving clinical research, medical education, expanding services, and growing workforces,” Turner said. This new initiative follows other recent investments, funded by our community through our philanthropic foundation and from funds provided by Baylor Scott & White to serve our community.”
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