Texas Children's Hospital opens women's pavilion in Austin

Medical care for women is expanding in Austin. Texas Children's Hospital last week opened its Pavilion for Women, to provide gynecological and obstetrical care from the teen years to post-menopausal years.

It's a prelude to the opening of the Texas Children's Hospital Austin, the first hospital expansion by Texas Children's outside of Houston.

The pavilion, 9817 N. Lake Creek Parkway, is just down the street from the Texas Children's Hospital Austin, set to open Feb. 6. Pregnant people who receive care at the pavilion will then give birth in one of the children's hospital's seven designated rooms for labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum care. An additional two rooms are designated for antepartum care for women who need to be hospitalized during pregnancy.

"It's incredible to see the vision expanding to Central Texas," Dr. Melanie Belt, clinical services director for the pavilion, said of the expansion of Texas Children's into Austin. Since entering the Central Texas market in 2018, Texas Children's now has 13 pediatric clinics, 13 specialty clinics and an urgent care clinic in Austin. "We can provide almost everything a woman needs for her reproductive health," Belt said.

Read more: What's behind the growth in Central Texas health care? Here's what you need to know.

In addition to the four obstetrician/gynecologists who will serve the pavilion, Texas Children's is adding maternal fetal medicine doctors. It has one already, a second one will join in fall, and it is looking for an additional three.

Texas Children's plans to do in-utero surgeries at the North Austin hospital. These are surgeries for which the Texas Children's team has been sending pregnant people to its hospitals in Houston. It also said that these will be surgeries that haven't been available in Austin before, Belt said.

In addition to the five maternal fetal medicine specialists Texas Children is eventually bringing to Austin, some of its Houston specialists might travel to Austin to perform surgeries when they have a needed expertise, said Russ Williams, senior vice president of Texas Children's Hospital North Austin Campus.

"We don't think anyone should have to leave Austin for care," Williams said.

"That's the main goal," Belt said.

Not alone in growing maternal care

"We are adding to what Austin already has," Williams said. "People unable to get the care they need will have greater access and greater ability to do that."

The pavilion and the hospital's women's services division joins two established and growing maternal fetal care providers: Ascension Texas and St. David's HealthCare. In 2021, Ascension Texas' Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas opened its comprehensive fetal care center and labor and delivery unit for healthy moms with sick babies to deliver at the children's hospital. The fetal center has been doing in-utero surgeries.

St. David's HealthCare's has its children's hospital and Women's Center of Texas at its North Austin hospital. This year, the Women's Center increased its labor and delivery space, growing from 29 rooms to 36, with four family suites; the postpartum space expanded from 71 rooms to 97; and the antepartum area will grow from 16 rooms to 24. Antepartum is for people after a complicated birth or people whose doctors are trying to prevent early labor. It also has birthing suites for women who want births without interventions like epidurals, but in a hospital setting.

In answer to the growth of births in Austin, Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin is building a new women's tower, which will open in 2025 and add 28 more beds for women's services. It also will have additional spaces for minimally invasive gynecologic surgeries and urogynecology, gynecologic oncology, breast diagnostics and surgery, and a pelvic physical therapy space.

Inside the pavilion

At the Texas Children's Pavilion for Women, each of the OB-GYNs has their own pod with three exam rooms and an office.

The pavilion has a lab for blood and urine collection, a treatment room for minor procedures, a pelvic physical therapy space, a medical spa for treatments like warm body sculpting, anti-aging therapies, tattoo removals, laser hair removals, injectable fillers and skin discoloration treatments.

It will have a reproductive psychiatrist to help women with mood disorders due to pregnancy, postpartum changes, fertility treatments, menopause and perinatal loss.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Children's Hospital opens Pavilion for Women in Austin