Memorial Hermann hospital expansion in Katy

KATY (FOX 26) - The bigger Katy gets, the greater its need for medical care. One of the hospitals on the far West side of Houston, barely ten years old, has just increased its capacity by nearly 50%.

This month Memorial Herman Katy Hospital opened its new patient care tower, adding 64 patient rooms to become a 206 bed hospital.

"This is he first major expansion to the campus since 2006," says John Kueven, the hospital's Chief Operating Officer.

Kueven says it expanded just about every service it provides, including doubling its operating room capacity, and adding 8 rooms in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit. The NICU rooms are especially large to be able to accomodate twins or triplets in the same room.

The adult ICU also added 8 beds, and there's more expansion on the way.

"The next 40 beds we expect to have built out this time next year," Kueven says. "The cardiac cath labs will be in July to August of this year. and the 2 additional ORs will be in July of this year."

The hospital's emergency room is a Level 4 trauma center, which will also be adding rooms, but already it serves as an important hub to Lifeflight helicopter.

"We can bring the patients in here and stablize them. Save their lives," Kueven says. "Then we can get them down to the services they need at the [Texas] Medical Center."

This Katy hospital doesn't do transplants and does not have a burn center, but it does just about everything else. And, as a community partner, it works with the Katy school district providing doctors and trainers for all middle school and high school athletics. That includes, of course, the national champion Katy Tigers.