Health care construction continues to surge around OKC metro

Integris Health recently broke ground on a $200 million project that will include a heart and intensive care unit expansion at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center on Northwest Expressway. (Rendering courtesy INTEGRIS Health)

Driving around Oklahoma City the last couple of years, you may have noticed new health care facilities popping up throughout the metro. These projects range from urgent care centers located in what seems like every corner shopping center or strip mall all the way up to larger construction projects and expansions at the more comprehensive hospital systems.

This should come as no surprise if you have been following recent news that Oklahoma City’s population grew by more than 170,000 people between 2010 and 2020. It makes sense that as more people move into the Oklahoma City region, the demand for more health care options and facilities grows as well.

“It is interesting that the metro area population grew by 14% over the past decade, and very similarly, the number of health care jobs increased by 13%. So, it is almost on a parallel trend to overall population growth,” said Eric Long, research economist with the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber.

Long continued by saying that over the past decade, the number of health care jobs has grown four times faster than the state as a whole. More than 82,000 people are employed in the sector, which accounts for 11% of all jobs in the Greater Oklahoma City area.

Between 2010 and 2020, the largest growth of health care jobs (4,600) has occurred in general medical and surgical hospitals, he said. Not surprisingly, jobs in freestanding ambulatory surgical and emergency centers jumped by a whopping 175%, although the total growth over that same time frame was 1,200 jobs. Nursing occupations, including registered nurses, nursing assistants and licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses, account for more than 22,000 health care sector jobs in OKC.

“I think anyone that drives down the street, you’ve seen a lot of these emergency clinics pop up, especially in areas where you have large population density through multifamily housing, younger populations. That’s where they’re trying to open up those facilities to be closer to those locations,” Long said.

The health care building boom is never more apparent than what is taking place or has taken place with several of OKC’s larger health care providers. Below is a quick snapshot or update of some of those recent construction or expansion projects from Oklahoma’s City’s largest health care providers.

INTEGRIS Health

On March 3, 2022, Integris Health broke ground on a $200 million project that will include a heart and intensive care unit expansion at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center on Northwest Expressway. This state-of-the art, 206,000-square-foot expansion is expected to be completed in 2024 and will consist of 64 ICU beds, multiple cardiac catheterization labs, cardiovascular operating rooms, hybris operating room, electrophysiology heart labs and cardiac diagnostic testing. Hospital officials said the new facility is being built in response to a dire need for intensive care in our state.

INTEGRIS Health also recently celebrated the opening of its second of three INTEGRIS Urgent Care centers in north Oklahoma City. INTEGRIS’ first urgent care center opened in Moore Dec. 13, while its third facility in Norman is expected to open in April. The urgent care facilities will provide care for urgent but non-life-threatening conditions and will be equipped with x-ray equipment as well as lab capabilities.

Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City

Construction is underway at Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City on a new, four-story building that will house the Love Family Women’s Center. This new $98 million, 175,000-square-foot facility, which is expected to be completed in fall 2023, will include 73 additional patient rooms and feature an obstetrics emergency department staffed by obstetricians and the state’s only hospital-based low intervention birthing center. Each floor will provide a variety of health care services for women such as a caesarean unit, a labor and delivery suite and antepartum unit, postpartum rooms and the neonatal intensive care unit. A large conference center is also planned, which will host support groups and various classes for childbirth, infant care and CPR.

Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City will soon welcome the new Love Family Women’s Center to its campus. (Rendering courtesy Mercy Hospital)

The Love Family Women’s Center continues Mercy’s commitment to providing its patients with quality health care and treatment. In 2020, Mercy opened its south location at Sooner Road and I-240 that features more than 200,000 square feet of space and 36 additional beds, enough room for an entire care team to provide specialty services, including oncology, imaging, and inpatient and outpatient surgery.

SSM Health

SSM Health continues to expand its presence across the Oklahoma City metro area with the recent additions of the SSM Health Medical Group office building in northeast Edmond and an expansion of the Frank C. Love Cancer Institute at SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital. The Edmond facility opened early in 2021, providing 13,000 square feet of space for urgent care services as well as primary care, pediatrics and specialty care provider offices.

The Frank C. Love Cancer Institute expansion opened in early 2020 and has provided St. Anthony Hospital with 16,000 square feet of additional clinic space designed to enhance exceptional care for cancer patients. The cancer institute program was formerly housed on the first floor of the hospital but is now located on the third floor where patients and their families receive the utmost care and treatment.

Norman Regional Health System

The Norman Regional Health System is in the midst of several expansion projects across the city of Norman. The most expansive work is taking place at its HealthPlex site at I-35 and Tecumseh. There, construction crews are busy building a new patient bed tower that will include 96 new patient hospital rooms, a new roundabout entrance and a new 750-car parking garage, all part of the Norman Regional Health System’s Inspire Health plan to consolidate all acute care services at the HealthPlex. Phase two of the plan will include construction of a cancer center and an ambulatory care center.

Across town, a few miles southeast of the University of Oklahoma campus, construction on Norman Regional Nine, a new freestanding emergency plus facility continues, another Inspire Health project. This project is designed to offer health care services to people living in Norman and other surrounding communities.

OU Health

OU Health’s most recent large-scale construction project was the new eight-story North Tower at OU Health University of Oklahoma Medical Center. That facility has provided its patients with the most advanced treatments and technology since it opened in fall 2020. The 450,000-square-foot North Tower houses a new medical intensive care and provides 144 additional beds and 32 new operating rooms. It was the largest hospital expansion in state history as well as one of the nation’s largest. Not only does the new North Tower include a new ICU but also additional space for hematology-oncology, bone marrow transplant and stem cell therapy.

This article originally appeared in the April 2022 edition of the VeloCity newsletter.