Parkland celebrates 10 years in new hospital facility

DALLAS - Parkland Health Systems is celebrating a major milestone. Its new Dallas facility opened 10 years ago this week.

Parkland Hospital in Dallas

The new Parkland facility opened in August of 2015, right across the street from the old county hospital facility that’s been around since 1954. 

For CEO Dr. Fred Cerise, it was an exodus from the past to the future of health care.

"I remember the day we moved, and there were patients coming across the bridge from the old hospital to the new hospital with tears in their eyes, literally couldn’t believe that this was actually for them," he said.

It was also the day county health care crossed over from an overcrowded facility into a state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, modern medical center.

By the numbers:

Since that day, there have been nearly 364,000 adults treated at Parkland Hospital. More than 160,000 surgeries have been performed.

Parkland was the first hospital in Texas to be designated as a Level 1 trauma center back in the 80s. Today, it has the busiest ER in the country.

"We’ll do about a quarter of a million ER visits a year. We’ll do over a million outpatient visits a year. And so, we want to do more in our outpatient clinics, but our emergency department is a place where we’ve got world-class programs – trauma, burns – that all of Dallas takes advantage of," Cerise said.

Last year, the county provided $1.4 billion in uncompensated health care. 

Though the majority of Parkland’s patients have jobs, many have low wages or do not have health insurance. Parkland provides health care with no questions asked.

What's next:

Parkland’s big mission is to expand access to health care.

"There is a lot of stuff going on in society and kind of the anchor position that we take is let’s focus on the health care of people in Dallas County and how we can do our job to ensure people have equitable access to health care," Cerise said.

There are new outpatient clinics in the works, as well as more virtual options.

Cerise believes AI and artificial analytics will be game changers for the hospital over the next five years.

"We finally have a facility now that matches the expertise of the caregivers. And we’re just grateful for the people of Dallas that have supported us and allowed us to do that," he said.