Mansfield makes new Texas Health Hospital feel welcome

By Amanda Rogers

Mansfield Record

Mansfield’s Texas Health Hospital opened Dec. 1 and the city and residents have rolled out the red carpet, they say.

Opening the city’s second full-service hospital in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t planned and wasn’t ideal, say Tiffany Hernandez, director of community engagement and foundation, and Carine Moura, manager of marketing and strategy for Texas Health Mansfield.

“Mansfield has been absolutely incredible,” Hernandez said. “They have welcomed us with open arms and made us feel right at home. (Opening a hospital in the middle of a pandemic) is something no one has done before in our lifetimes and it requires everyone to be flexible. Things can change on a dime. If we can open during a pandemic, with God’s help, we can do anything.”

The 195,400-square-foot hospital and 80,000-square-foot office building are set on 38 acres in south Mansfield at 2300 Lone Star Road. The $150 million hospital has 59 beds with a shell for 36 more on the third level of the four-story building. The hospital has 13 emergency room beds, 12 ICU beds, a cath lab for cardiac procedures and three operating rooms with a shell for three more. The fourth story is the women’s floor with four labor and delivery suites and four post-partum rooms.

An endoscopy suite and bronchi suite are under construction and expected to open this summer.

The shell for 12 more beds is ready to go and space for 24 more in the future, Moura said, “we’re just waiting for the second floor to fill up.”

“We assessing our volumes to determine when we will start construction on the space for the extra beds,” she said.

The hospital hasn’t filled up yet, but it’s come close, Moura said.

“We had a surge of patients beyond what we anticipated,” she said. “But then we weren’t expecting a pandemic.”

The pandemic “really helps give us purpose,” Hernandez said.

“As our chief nursing officer said, just imagine where the community would be if we weren’t here,” she said.

The hospital ‘s primary service area is Mansfield, South Arlington, Midlothian, Waxahachie, Venus and Alvarado.

Kenneth Rose, who served as vice president of ancillary services at Texas Health Huguley for four years, is the hospital’s president. The hospital has close to 400 employees on staff and they have a volunteer group that plans to help outside the hospital.

“We consider it our mission to support the community,” Hernandez said.

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