University Health CEO Meeting Increased Demand Through Expansion

Ed Banos shares with HealthLeaders how the construction of two community hospitals will be a game-changer for the health system.

University Health is undergoing a transformation in more ways than one. In the coming years, the San Antonio-based health system will essentially double in size and at the helm of the expansion is a new but familiar face ready for growth.

Now three months into the job as president and CEO of University Health, Ed Banos recognizes that his biggest challenge is the extra volume the system has on its hands. In the short term, the focus is on hiring and managing additional staff to deal with the increased demand. Ultimately, the construction of two community hospitals will allow the system to better serve existing patients and care for additional areas.

The two new hospitals, expected to open in early 2027 in the South and North East sectors of Bexar County, will add to University Health’s two current hospitals and more than 30 clinic and outpatient locations. Significant expansion is on the way but the system has already been adding to its main teaching hospital, University Hospital in South Texas Medical Center, over the past decade.

In 2014, the hospital opened the doors to its 10-story Sky Tower, adding 420 acute care beds to the facility. This past December, the system opened the University Health Women’s and Children’s Hospital on the Main Campus, providing the community with a 12-story, 300-bed location.

“University Health has had a great history of growing the last 10 years and I would say our biggest challenge is the continued growth that we have,” Banos told HealthLeaders. “A lot of people use University Health, we've grown our physician practices, our partnership with UT Health has also put a lot of demand for more surgeries, operating room time. So capacity has been a big push for us because the demand is there and with demand comes the need to hire more staff.”

Pictured: Ed Banos, CEO, University Health.

Banos understands the appetite for expansion at University Health after being with the organization since 2015, when he was named chief operating officer and executive vice president.

On July 1, he replaced longtime CEO George Hernandez, who was with the system since 1983 and served as CEO since 2005.

Now, Banos is eager to see through the growth that his predecessor imagined for the system.

“The most exciting thing is that the vision the board and George had prior was that we cannot just be a one-hospital system,” Banos said. “We are here to serve all of Bexar County and all of South Texas from our specialty related programs and we were never going to be able to provide that service in the future if we were a one-hospital system that was so landlocked in beds.”

The upcoming hospitals in South Side and North East will serve collective purposes, as well as individual ones, Banos stated.

“On the South Side, it's going to be a huge economic generator,” he said. “Our South Side has not had a lot of infrastructure put into it from a community standpoint. Us putting in that hospital now and a couple of housing developments now, you're going to see a real economic development change on the South side, better infrastructure, better paying jobs, which will lead to a lot of other great things.

“On the North East side, it's just important because that's a huge fast-growing area that already has the infrastructure but doesn't have a real good University Health presence. For us, that will be a new market but it will also be a good market where we can take care of patients that had limited access to University Health.”

Both hospitals will also allow the system to integrate technology more seamlessly. Banos admitted the term ‘hospital of the future’ is all too common these days, but that’s what he envisions for the new facilities because technology will be more built into their fabric than at a hospital like the Medical Center.

“We'll be able to really put technology in there,” he said. “So we think of ourselves having what we consider smart rooms that might be able to do telehealth, monitoring, those types of things. We really believe these community hospitals will be much more technologically advanced and capable because they're going to have the infrastructure built in them. With the stuff we're doing in our main hospital, a lot of that is being added on. We're having to put it on right now. But a hospital that will be built with all that infrastructure and all that technology, we'll be able to monitor patients from far away, we'll be able to use artificial intelligence to do a lot of our work that is being done much easier in a hospital that was built that way than one that is retrofitted.”

Achieving growth as a health system right now can be a challenge in the current economic climate. For University Health and Banos, the opportunity is one they’re poised to meet.