Support Mounts for San Antonio Children’s Hospital

Sixteen years after a similar proposal drowned in controversy, a plan to build a new, state-of-the art children’s hospital in San Antonio is quietly gathering steam.

Doctors at the University of Texas Health Science Center have been promoting the benefits of a new facility, with supporters citing a dearth of pediatric specialists here, with several lost to high-level children’s hospitals in other cities. But Christus Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital, the main pediatric teaching facility, is cool to the idea.

Still, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, the University Health System and the Baptist Health System have expressed interest. And they hope to bring others on board, including private donors who would help build and endow a new hospital.

“I want to try to light a fire under this issue,” Wolff said, adding that he had spoken to most of the hospital leaders and briefed new Mayor Julián Castro.

In the early 1990s, University and Baptist were the holdouts when the Methodist and Santa Rosa systems created a partnership to build a new children’s hospital in the South Texas Medical Center. But community opposition — much of it driven by doctors at Santa Rosa Children’s — caused the partners to abandon the idea.

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