Residents on the city’s East Side will soon have emergency health care services.
Baptist Health System is opening a 24/7 hospital near Rigsby Avenue and Loop 410 on Monday.
The soon-to-be opened Baptist Neighborhood Hospital-Rigsby will have an 11,000-square-foot emergency department that accepts ambulances, along with a triage room, 10 examination rooms and 24-hour nursing stations. The hospital will also have CT, ultrasound and x-ray services, along with in-house lab services for pregnancy, strep throat and other medical tests.
Physicians and nurses will be able to offer life support services for heart attacks, but will not offer inpatient care, said Baptist officials Wednesday at an event celebrating the opening.
Liz Diaz Drake, the hospital’s director, said patients would be evaluated based on their needs and how soon they needed care.
“We’re smaller and we don’t have that influx of people like a bigger hospital,” she said. “We’ll try to get you back there (in an examination room) as soon as possible.”
Diaz Drake added that the hospital will be able to treat most health issues and could stabilize and transfer patients to nearby facilities if more extensive care is needed.
The new hospital is opening in an area that has long lacked medical facilities.
According to a 2022 article from the San Antonio Express-News, medical facilities are largely located in the downtown, South Texas Medical Center and on the northern parts of San Antonio.
City council member Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, who represents the surrounding District 2, said in a statement that he was excited about the new hospital and noted that the community has “long felt disparate health outcomes and the impacts of underinvestment.”
McKee-Rodriguez said many residents have to drive to other parts of the city to access health resources. “This site is in a perfect location to serve an area that experiences higher rates of asthma, diabetes, and other chronic health outcomes,” he said.
The new neighborhood hospital will feature a triage room, 10 examination rooms and 24-hour nursing stations, along with a CT, ultrasound and x-ray services.
Baptist Health System, operates six acute-care hospitals in the city, and is owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp.
The new Rigsby neighborhood location is part of a partnership with Emerus, a company that specializes in operating neighborhood hospitals in underserved areas, according to a press release. Baptist and Emerus operate 10 such neighborhood hospitals in the city.
Baptist Health System’s market CEO, Bill Waechter said the system is planning on adding more neighborhood hospitals in San Antonio, but it was too early to specify a next location.
Waechter said that when it comes to emergency situations, time is essential.
“We are proud to serve the East Side with timely, compassionate care that could save lives,” Waechter said. “The convenience of being in the neighborhood also seamlessly connects patients to the broader, more specialized services our system of Baptist hospitals across the city can provide.”
Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert, whose Precinct 4 includes the new hospital, said while he welcomes the new hospital, more work needs to be done to bring specialized health care services to the area, such as mental health and occupational therapy providers.
“We are seeing unprecedented investments in health care — the greatest health care investments in the area’s history,” Calvert said.
McKee-Rodriguez said the new hospital is just the beginning and more health care resources need to be directed to the East Side, but he noted it was an important step.
“While we still have so much more to do to address the health care need in our city, especially as access to health care is being stripped by the Trump administration, this will be a landmark, transformational asset for folks on the East Side,” he said.