Doctors take on designing, operating their own hospitals

Two groups of Houston doctors put together plans to build full-service facilities.

By Mike Norbut, AMNews staff. Oct. 11, 2004.

About 90 Houston physicians are collaborating with a health care development company to build and manage a full-service, acute care hospital and adjoining medical office building.

The $70 million development is yet another example of how physicians are ratcheting up their involvement in the health care infrastructure. What started as a smattering of doctor-owned ambulatory surgery centers and imaging facilities expanded in recent years to include specialty hospitals and investments in existing hospitals. Now doctors are adding project development to their lists.

"One of the things I've learned, as we've seen the proliferation of ambulatory surgery centers and freestanding imaging centers, is patients don't benefit as much from all the different locations," said Paul C. Cook, MD, a urologist in Houston and a physician partner in the project. "By consolidating all the locations, we're creating one-stop shopping. We've taken a very fragmented process and brought it together under one roof."

The physicians partnered with GP Medical Ventures, a health care development company based in Nashville, Tenn., to build the facility. It's scheduled to open in fall 2005 and will be named Houston Town & Country Hospital. The name was selected based on a patient survey.

It will house 105 beds and eight surgical suites, a full-service emergency department and ancillary services common to most acute care hospitals.

At the same time, other physicians are getting involved in another Houston development: a pair of acute care hospitals in the Midtown section of the city. About 75 physicians, many of whom have primary care backgrounds, have invested in the $174 million project.