A new tower at Children’s Medical Center Plano will triple bed counts. Take a look inside

A nearly complete new tower at Children’s Medical Center Plano will allow the hospital to grow along with Collin County.

Less than two months out from the eight-story tower’s opening date, Graham Torres, Children’s Health vice president of facilities operations, compared the final weeks to moving into a newly built house.

Kailey Broussard

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KERA News

“We’re in that fit-out stage where we have the proverbial U-Haul backed out to the back of the house,” he said.

As Torres guided reporters through the 395,000 square-foot tower Thursday, workers set up computers and moved in equipment. The new space will nearly double Children’s Medical Center Plano’s emergency department capacity and triple the campus bed count to 212 beds.

Collin County has experienced years of rapid growth. Vanessa Walls, Children’s Health chief market executive, said the hospital’s expansion allows the system to keep pace — and offer more services to surrounding areas.

“We are looking at the Plano campus as a bit of the hub, if you will, for that care that’s provided in the north,” she said. “So folks who live, say, in Prosper, Frisco, McKinney – any of those areas have easier access to the care they want and need closer to home.”

Children’s Medical Center Plano is set to open its new tower in December. With it, the hospital will be able to expand six specialty care programs:

• Pauline Allen Gill Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders 
• The Heart Center 
• Surgical services 
• Neurology 
• Pulmonology 
• Gastroenterology 

The tower also includes space for up to 12 operating rooms and a 12-bed eating disorder unit.

Torres said he hopes anyone who sees the new tower can also see the intentionality behind its design.

“This didn’t end up this way by happenstance,” he said. “There was a lot of thoughtful conversation on how we allocated every square inch, and ultimately, the priority was maximizing the square footage for patient care.”

Hospital leadership consulted with patients and their families to weigh in on designs, hospital furniture and amenities. The tower includes outdoor balconies, rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows, workspace for patients’ families and grab-and-go healthy food choices.

“What we heard from our patient families was they’re not looking for the wow factor,” Torres said. “They’re here in a very critical time and a very stressful time for the care of their child.”

Rooms are equipped with virtual whiteboards for medical providers to update in real time and communicate with caregivers. The televisions have connections for patients to play video games; patients can also change the color of their room lighting.

“We wanted to find all of those moments and opportunities to give the patient control of their environment,” Torres said.

The tower also features unique designs centered around animal mascots assigned to each floor that reflect different regions of Texas.

The new space is set to open on Dec. 10.

Got a tip? Email Kailey Broussard at [email protected].

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