Ben Taub provides critically important services to our community, especially to those who have nowhere else to turn for healthcare. Its skilled, hard-working, heroic staff members save lives every day, and its existing facilities are inadequate.

However, we all should be concerned about the expensive new hospital project that Harris Health is planning.

‍ ‍On March 19th, Harris County Commissioners Ellis, Briones, Garcia, and Ramsey approved the condemnation of 8.9 acres of Hermann Park. Harris Health intends the land to be the site of a new Ben Taub Hospital, to be funded by another $2.5 billion taxpayer-funded bond.

The new hospital would be located next to the county’s only other Level 1 Trauma Center. The entire area has flooded and will flood again. State law prohibits building a new hospital on this flood-prone site.

Harris Health’s own analysis suggested that the hospital should move closer to its patients.

Harris Health has shown no studies to justify this monumental decision about the future of Level 1 Trauma access in Harris County, and has not involved the community in this process. (Its four “town halls” involved a proposed 100-bed hospital addition on the parkland.)

Harris Health has refused to release its recent studies and reports regarding the condition of its facilities or the siting of a new hospital.

The bond that voters supported in 2023 did not mention condemning parkland or building an entirely new hospital on this site.

The Harris County Commissioners refused to delay the condemnation vote for this future project, even though Harris Health’s LBJ Hospital construction project is significantly over budget, raising questions about the viability of any imminent work on the park site.

‍ Residents deserve accurate information about this project and a careful, transparent study of our current and future trauma, specialty, and primary care needs before Harris Health makes this critical decision about the future of health care in Harris County.