San Antonio Getting $50-Mil Cardiac Hospital

SAN ANTONIO-MedCath Corp. is putting its 11th hospital devoted to heart care in San Antonio. The 60-bed Heart Hospital of San Antonio is to open near the Interstate 10-Loop 410 interchange in the municipality of Balcones Heights.

The area, in northwest San Antonio, is close to other hospitals including Humana Hospital of San Antonio, St. Luke’s Lutheran Hospital and South Texas Ambulatory Surgery. The medical and health-care business is San Antonio’s biggest industry.

The Heart Hospital, which is to begin operation in 2003, is a $50-million project, David Crane, MedCath’s CEO, tells GlobeSt.com. It will be jointly owned with a group of San Antonio physicians. MedCath has physician partners in all its hospitals, with MedCath being the majority owner.

The hospital is on 12 acres near Crossroads Mall. Dr. Charles Rabinowitz, a member of the physicians group teaming up with MedCath, said they chose the site for its central location to make it easier for patients and doctors to reach it. “We must have looked at 50 different parcels of land,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “We wanted more or less a central location.”The team worked with Mike Weiss of San Antonio-based 4-M Properties to find the site. Rabinowitz says the hospital will have 350 employees and an annual payroll of $14.5 million.

The hospital will be 140,000 sf and its 60-bed capacity will be expandable to 120 beds, Rabinowitz says. The partnership also is planning a 60,000-sf to 70,000-sf medical office building on the same campus.

MedCath, based in Charlotte, NC, operates the 58-bed Heart Hospital of Austin, which is located next to a Barshop & Oles-developed shopping center anchored by H-E-B’s Central Market. MedCath also has hospitals in Phoenix and Tucson, AZ, Little Rock, AK, Bakersfield, CA, Albuquerque, Dayton, OH and Sioux Falls, SD. It also has hospitals under construction in Harlingen, TX and the North Shore of New Orleans that are expected to open in late 2002. Earlier this year, MedCath sold a hospital in McAllen, TX to an affiliate of Universal Health Services Inc., based in King of Prussia, PA for $56 million.<p.The company says the heart disease focus facilitates more efficient patient scheduling and directs capital primarily into in cardiac-care equipment rather than buy equipment for treating a wider variety of health problems.

MedCath, which made its IPO stock offering in July, reported a 6.6% increase in revenues to $8.97 million for its third quarter. Its loss dropped to $233,000 from $5.6 million.