RioGrandeGuardian

El Paso County Commissioner Pct. 2
Veronica Escobar

Escobar urges support for Children's Hospital bond election
16 October 2007
Michele Angél
EL PASO, October 16 - El Paso County Commissioner Veronica Escobar has put out a call to the women (and men) of El Paso to support a bond election for a Children's Hospital at Thomason.
Voters will decide in November whether to approve $120.2 million to finance the construction of a children's hospital.
Escobar is asking women to be present for a news conference Wednesday, October 17th at 11 a.m. in front of the Thomason Hospital. She will be joined at the news conference by Anne Semmer Grieshop, of the International Children's Hospital Foundation.
"El Paso is the largest metropolitan area without a children's hospital. We need it, not only because our families deserve to have access to healthcare for their children, but because this will be a vital piece of the economic development engine we are building in our community around Thomason and the Texas Tech medical school," Escobar said.
"This is a historic time in El Paso: we are redeveloping downtown, preparing for unprecedented expansion at Fort Bliss, building a medical school, and we are investing in our community like never before. The children's hospital is yet another piece of the renaissance so many have worked towards for a long, long time. It's an exciting time."
If El Paso voters approve, the Children's Hospital will be the second to be built along the Texas-Mexico border. South Texas Health System operates the private Edinburg Children's Hospital. Driscoll operates pediatric specialty clinics in Brownsville, Harlingen, Laredo, and McAllen.
R.E. Thomason is located at 4815 Alameda Avenue in El Paso. The hospital is El Paso's only not-for-profit hospital and healthcare regional referral center of specialty care. It is also an academic teaching hospital.
According to Escobar's office, pediatric specialties are underrepresented in El Paso, and that care is highly fragmented. Pediatric sub-specialists practicing in El Paso today are spread between four hospitals and an office. The community pediatrician ration in El Paso is 1 to 3,532, almost double the national average of 1 to 1769.
The proposed hospital would have a range of pediatric specialty services that go beyond what is currently available, according to the commissioner's office. Physicians' would be able to serve more children each day with the ability to offer comprehensive services in one location.
Critics of the bond measure contend that the publicly-owned, not-for-profit hospital will unfairly use its public financing to take patients away from private hospitals.
Potential problems include the hospital's ability to draw specialists and other hospital personnel away from the private sector, and the ability to pay them. The cost above and beyond original construction also concerns some critics.