Group reports 2010 health care industry growth in Pasadena area

The health care sector in the Pasadena area greatly expanded in 2010, reported a local economic development group.

In its year-end newsletter, the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership highlighted the following developments in the sector:

•  The opening of the University of Texas-Medical Branch Specialty Care Center at Victory Lakes in League City. The facility cost approximately $61 million.
•  The planned $92 million expansion of the Clear Lake Regional Medical Center hospital in Webster.
•  An announcement by the Heart and Vascular Hospital in Webster that it will add 72 private rooms. The $17 million project is slated to be finished in February.
•  St. Luke's Episcopal Health System acquired a majority interest in Patients Medical Center in Pasadena.
•  Plans will soon be announced for the Bay Area Medical Center at 200 Blossom in Webster.
•  Eleven beds and a new operating room have been added to Houston Physicians Hospital in Webster.

Overall, more than 12 new clinics or medical complexes and four new emergency rooms have opened or will open in Webster, Pasadena, League City and Dickinson.

BAHEP notes that these new facilities join an "outstanding" health care system that also includes Bayshore Medical Center, CHRISTUS St. John Hospital, Deke Slayton Cancer Center, Devereux Texas Treatment Network, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, M.D. Anderson Regional Care-Bay Area, Memorial Hermann Southeast Hospital and UTMB Health.