The new Ascension Seton Women’s Hospital connected to the Ascension Seton Medical Center on 38th Street will finally open on Monday, after about 18 months of construction delays.
Ascension Seton is the safety net hospital for women’s services such as labor and delivery. Dell Seton Medical Center handles most of the other safety net medical needs.
The hospital said the delay from a fall 2024 was related to making sure the hospital was able to deliver exactly what it needed and had planned, and that it met city and state codes, said Matt Stabe, assistant chief operating officer of Ascension Seton, who headed the project.
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With 178 beds, the eight-story, 325,000-square-foot tower is bigger than many of Ascension Texas’ stand-alone hospitals. This is the biggest addition the 51-year-old hospital has had, and it will feel like a hospital within a hospital.
The $362 million building has room for 7,500 to 8,500 babies to be born a year, an increase from the almost 6,000 born there in 2024, and it will almost double its neonatal intensive care unit.
For the last two weeks, the teams have been running drills of different scenarios to be comfortable in the space and workout systems and how patients and staff will move through the building.
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The project is an answer to the growing need for women’s medical services in Central Texas. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates there 2.5 million people in Travis, Williamson, Hays and Bastrop counties — more than 10% increase between 2020 and 2024. About 6% of the population is younger than 5, and 21% is younger than 18.
The labor and delivery rooms at Ascension Seton Medical Center have been at capacity weekly and the staff has to work within the hospital and the hospital system to find space, said Amanda Cobb, the director of perinatal services at the hospital.
The space that is being used for women’s services now will be repurposed as the hospital continues to grow, said Matt Cova, the president of Ascension Seton. Nothing has been announced yet, he said.
Inside the new women’s hospital
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This hospital’s entrance is one level below the main hospital because of the hill on which the main hospital sits. The women’s hospital is behind the main hospital and next to the new parking garage. It has its own entrance and ambulance entrance.
The ground floor: The dedicated women’s emergency department with 14 rooms doubles the current emergency department’s seven triage rooms for women’s services. It has a separate ambulance entrance from the main hospital’s ambulance bay.
A mother in labor will check in at the women’s hospital’s emergency department first and then be admitted. The emergency department also handles miscarriages, any unusual bleeding, gynecological infections and more.
The staff at the women’s center emergency department and the main emergency department can handle any emergency, but if there is time, patients will be taken to the right emergency department for them.
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The idea of this emergency room is that the patient does not stay long here before either being transferred upstairs to a labor and delivery room or a room for gynecology, or being sent home, said Shannon Martinez, associate chief nursing officer.
The ground floor has a grab-and-go dining area with coffee bar and a meditation room. For full meals, visitors can go to the main cafeteria. An outside healing garden between the two hospitals has tables and chairs and picnic benches.
First floor: Part of this floor has not been built out and will provide room for expansion. This floor also has the on-call rooms for doctors. Because Ascension Seton has residents and fellows, trainings can be done at this hospital with additional technology and space for that.
Second floor:The second floor is where the operating rooms are. Women who have planned surgeries or Cesarean sections or a planned induction, check in the lobby here. There are two infant resuscitation rooms for the most critical babies. They are directly connected to two of the six Cesarean section operating rooms. In the older building, the NICU team has to take the baby across the hall, instead of through an open doorway, to do resuscitation measures. These connected rooms also can be used for births of multiples when each baby would need its own medical team. There are also recovery rooms for after the C-section but before a woman is transferred to the postpartum room.
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Four dedicated gynecological and urogynecological operating rooms are for surgeries such as removing etopic pregnancies, hysterectomies, removing fibroids and repairing pelvic floors. It’s important to have the the C-section rooms and the operating rooms together, said Dr. Lori Harper, the division chief of maternal fetal medicine and women’s health at Dell Medical School, because sometimes a C-section can turn into a more serious operation and will need the equipment that is found in the gynecological operating rooms. The operating rooms has two Da Vinci surgical robots.
The 20 regular labor and delivery rooms, plus six low-intervention labor and delivery rooms, also are on this floor. The low-intervention rooms have birthing tubs and a headwall that doesn’t look as clinical as the other headwalls. These six rooms are for the mother who is considering a birthing center, but wants the security of being in the hospital just in case. All of the labor rooms are bigger than what’s in the current hospital.
This floor also has a dedicated elevator that just runs from the ground level emergency department to right outside the second-floor operating rooms.
Third floor:This floor has the antepartum rooms for mothers who need to be hospitalized while pregnant. The women’s hospital has the highest level of maternal care, a level IV, just like Ascension Seton does now. This floor has rooms for people recovering from gynecological or urogynecological operations. The 31 rooms can be allocated as needed. This floor also has the Ronald McDonald House family room with a kitchen, living room, dining room and laundry facilities.
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Fourth and fifth floors: Each floor has 30 postpartum rooms for the mom’s recovery after a baby is born as well as a nursery with room for 15 babies. The rooms are larger than the current Ascension Seton rooms and will be on two dedicated floors instead of spread throughout three floors.
Sixth and seventh floors: The Level III NICU is on these two floors. Unlike in the previous hospital, this NICU has private rooms where the parents can stay with the baby if they want. The NICU is designed for 66 single babies but can fit up to 84 if there are twins or if they need to double up on rooms for capacity reasons. Each room has a viewing window where nurses can monitor and watch the baby without entering the room. There are also cameras for parents to watch their babies when they are away from the hospital.
“It will be a different experience,” said Dr. John Loyd, the division chief of neonatology at Ascension Seton Medical Center and Dell Children’s Medical Center. Some research has shown that the private rooms are better for neurological development than having multi-baby bays, Loyd said. “There is a clinical benefit,” he said.
The new women’s hospital continued to share staff and work in concert with Dell Children’s as Ascension Seton does now, and is still able to move babies quickly from one to the other based on needs. “Dell Children’s and this space are one ecosystem,” Loyd said.
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Dell Children’s has the highest NICU level and is where the most complex babies, including those with cardiac problems or who need immediate surgery, will continue to go. The women’s hospital has a dedicated small baby team that focuses on the babies who are born prematurely at 22 to 25 weeks gestation.
Addressing Central Texas’ baby boom
This women’s hospital project is one of many across Central Texas that are an answer to more women and children in the area:
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