What Children’s Health’s Plano Expansion Means for North Texas

Children’s Health Plano’s campus has been at its inpatient capacity for two years. Despite the growth of clinics and other services at the medical center, the hospital system has been limited by a lack of inpatient beds since the end of the pandemic. But this fall, Children’s Health opened the new tower, which adds 140 beds and more than doubles the hospital’s footprint.

The eight-story tower will add 395,000 square feet of space, triple the Plano campus bed count, and add 400 jobs to the region. Forty-eight emergency department rooms will double the current department’s capacity, and eight operating rooms are also part of the expansion, with four more shelled for future growth.

The added space reflects the region’s growth. This year, Collin County was home to four of the top ten fastest-growing cities in the country. Between 2010 and 2024, the county’s population grew 47.2 percent to more than 1.1 million people. The country grew 7.7 percent, and Texas grew 19 percent during that time.

The vision for Children’s Health Plano began in 2002 when the Dallas North Tollway didn’t reach all the way to the hospital’s location, but in analyzing population and housing trends, Children’s Health purchased 180 acres in Collin County and eventually opened the hospital in 2008. “It was unique in the children’s hospital world,” says Vanessa Walls, who leads operations and strategies north of Dallas for the health system as chief market executive at Children’s Health. “They’re usually in urban settings, but we had a vision of being able to provide pediatric care in this community in a way that would give easier access to the community.”

In 2019, Children’s Health’s board approved the current tower expansion, and five years later, it is up and running. The opening of the new building was preceded by a planned visit from Health and Human Services in September in order to upgrade the hospital from a Level IV to a Level III trauma center. Walls says the hospital has its eyes set on becoming a Level II trauma center in the future.

While the Plano campus shares many resources and services with the Dallas campus, the Plano hospital also specializes in several areas. Walls highlighted the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine Plano, which offers orthopaedic, sports medicine, spine, sports rehab, sports performance, and sports concussion services. The hospital’s eating disorder program allows children as young as five to get the treatment they need and draws patients from around the country. The Plano expansion includes a dedicated 12-bed dedicated eating disorder unit.

In addition to adding capacity and strengthening specialty areas, the new tower is equipped with the latest technology, which can be challenging to plan for when innovation moves much quicker than construction. Walls note multiple screens in the room that can be used to entertain children and display health records simultaneously, and tablets outside the room that change in real-time to list the care team, dietary needs, and any other information that used to be written and erased on a whiteboard.

The completion of the Plano tower arrived as the construction of Children’s Health’s new pediatric campus in the medical district began. Local architecture firm HKS designed the building and is also one of the designers of the new campus in Dallas, meaning what was learned in the construction of the Plano expansion can be applied directly to the plans for the new pediatric hospital in Dallas. “There was a great deal of synergy in both projects,” Walls says. “Both teams have been able to share experiences and design decisions and develop workflows around those to see what works and what doesn’t.”

There is a saying in healthcare that a bed built is a bed filled. With North Texas’ growth and Collin County’s reputation as a family-friendly area, the adage will likely hold with Children’s Health’s Plano expansion. And don’t worry, the pasturing horses are still around. “The pediatric population in DFW will double by the year 2050, and that’s growth that the rest of the country is not experiencing,” Walls says. “The tower and this expansion allow us to provide more care for more kids, and we want to leverage that as a regional and system asset.”