Ascension Seton will open a new hospital tailored toward women’s healthcare on Monday in Central Austin.
Ascension Seton Women’s Hospital is located on the south side of the main Ascension Seton Medical Center campus on West 38th Street. Ascension broke ground on the 325,000-square-foot facility in March 2023. The project experienced several delays in the years leading up to its opening.
“We always joke in women’s services that it takes 9 1/2 months to make a baby, and if only it took that same amount of time for a very big capital project such as this, it would have been great,” said Laura Swaney, chief strategy officer of women’s services for Ascension Texas.
Swaney said that the new hospital came in response to the needs of a growing Austin.
“There was a recognition that the women’s health infrastructure was not keeping pace, and quite frankly, that Austin families deserved a facility where every detail was purposely built for them,” Swaney said.
Several of the operating rooms at Ascension Seton Women’s Hospital are sized to accommodate C-section deliveries of twins and triplets.
The hospital’s ground floor includes a dedicated 24/7 women’s emergency department, which includes 14 private rooms that are equipped for both general emergency care and specialized obstetric and gynecologic emergencies.
“[A woman] is coming in with a very specific need, and we want to make sure that we are welcoming her into an environment where we can meet those needs and alleviate the burden for mom, or for the woman, of all the other things that you would typically see in a general emergency department or a freestanding ER,” Swaney said.
The women’s hospital is connected to the main Ascension Seton Medical Center, which staff said will make it simple to transfer patients if their needs are better suited to care at the other facility.
Ascension Seton Women’s Hospital is designated as a Level IV maternal care provider, meaning it is equipped to handle complex and high-risk pregnancies. It includes 26 labor and delivery rooms, six of which are dedicated “low-intervention birth suites” with soaking tubs, and also has six dedicated C-section suites. Four additional operating rooms have robotic technology suitable for minimally invasive surgeries.
Several labor and delivery rooms at the women’s hospital include birthing tubs and are set up for patients who prefer minimal interventions.
The fourth floor is dedicated to postpartum care and includes 60 private rooms. The sixth level is home to the hospital’s Level III neonatal intensive care unit, which is staffed by Dell Children’s neonatologists and has space for up to 84 infants. Private rooms on the NICU floor are equipped with AngelEye cameras, which allow parents to watch their child when they’re unable to be at the hospital.
“Other hospitals will have various components [of this], but to have it all together in one health system is quite exciting,” Swaney said.
Swaney said patients would begin transitioning from Ascension Seton Medical Center’s current women’s area to the new dedicated hospital on Monday. The hospital system has not yet announced what the old space will be used for once the transition is complete.
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