Caring for neighbors here, close to home.
Ascension Seton Hays provides world-class medical care to every neighbor in our region, regardless of their ability to pay. As our region grows by leaps and bounds, so too does the demand for quality healthcare resources. HereCare ensures that every person in our community has access to the best care available, and it is our giving community that makes this possible.
Ascension Seton Hays is the first stop when our neighbors experience health crises, and our philanthropic partners—leaders like you—intuitively understand the vital importance of building service capacity here at home. Your generosity helps keep our hospital the first-class, first-choice for every neighbor who needs us, without exception.
Where here keeps growing.
Here is a moving target. Especially in our region. When we opened our doors 15 years ago, we were the only hospital serving our growing community. Today, Ascension Seton Hays is in the heart of one of the fastest growing regions in Texas and is the highest level trauma center (Level II) between Austin and San Antonio.
When someone needs trauma care, they often need specialists from many areas of medicine—trauma, neurosciences, orthopedics, and more. As the population and needs of our region grow, we are expanding our specialty care in key service areas like cardiovascular, neurosciences, orthopedics, NICU, and mother/baby services. It is our goal to ensure no patient must leave Hays County to receive the care they need.
A continuous commitment to being the best.
For Ascension Seton, the influx of people into our community isn’t merely a capacity issue. Our leadership role as the safety net health system requires us to continuously improve, attract and recruit top talent, enhance our facilities, and elevate our prestige and capabilities.
11.4%
GROWTH
is projected for the population in Hays County over the next five years
7.5%
GROWTH
is projected for the 11 counties Ascension Seton Hays serves over the next five years
39%
OF PATIENTS
were un- or under-insured in 2023
Growing our services here.
Over the next five years, every service line and specialty in the Hays region is expected to grow. As we strive to keep up with this increased demand, Ascension Seton Hays will invest in the growth of our community’s most-needed specialties: Neurology, Cardiology, Orthopedics, NICU, and Mother/Baby Services.
Cardiovascular
The first open heart surgery in Hays County was performed at Ascension Seton Hays in 2009. Since then, we have continued to expand cardiovascular services. Between 2022 and 2023, we experienced a 12.4% increase in cardiac catheterization procedures, which are often used to diagnose, prevent, and/or treat cardiovascular issues. We recently opened a fourth catheterization lab that features state-of-the-art electrophysiology equipment, allowing cardiologists to examine, diagnose, and treat the heart’s electrical activity, which controls the patient’s heart rate. Adding this equipment to our already exceptional cardiovascular program means more patients can receive specialty cardiovascular care close to home.
Neurosciences
In 2018, Ascension Seton Hays performed the first brain surgery in Hays County. Today, our growing neurology and neurosurgery team performs about 220 surgeries annually and treats a variety of neurologic disorders and diseases, including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, dementia, and strokes. Ascension Seton Hays is a designated Primary Stroke Center, which is crucial as patients from across the South/Central region are brought to our hospital for stroke care. The stroke response team works diligently to provide the fastest care possible from the moment an individual comes in with signs of a stroke through diagnosis and treatment—ultimately saving lives and improving long-term outcomes for patients.
Orthopedics
Over the next five years, the fastest growing portion of Ascension Seton Hays’ patient population is patients aged 65+. This age group is estimated to grow to nearly a quarter of all patients cared for by Ascension Seton Hays. In addition to life-saving Orthopedic care, our caregivers often provide Orthopedic care that is life-changing for patients who’ve experienced years of pain and poor mobility. Year-over-year, our Orthopedics team has seen a 12% increase in patient volumes. Continuing to grow our Orthopedics program and ensure our surgeons have access to world-class technology and equipment is truly life-changing for our community.
Mother/Baby & NICU
As our community continues to grow, the need for expanding Mother/Baby and NICU services also grows. Since opening in 2009, Ascension Seton Hays has doubled the number of Labor & Delivery rooms and expanded the postpartum unit, but it is not enough to keep up with demand. We have managed the increased demand for our services while also being awarded some of the industry’s highest accolades for the care we provide to mothers and newborns. Nine percent of babies born at our hospital receive care in the NICU before going home. When some of these babies need to be transferred to another NICU, it adds to an already difficult experience. We are dedicated to keeping NICU babies at Ascension Seton Hays, ensuring they remain close to their families.
PROJECTED 5-YEAR GROWTH
16.9%
GROWTH
Cardiovascular
15.8%
GROWTH
Neurosciences
10.4%
GROWTH
Orthopedics
6.5%
GROWTH
Women’s Health
Generosity here stays here.
Our donor community seeds life-saving research, cutting-edge technology, and more to support the best possible care. In fact, donations play such a massive role in healthcare progress, that our donors directly contribute to excellence at every level. By breaking down funding barriers that can limit our growth, donor generosity significantly enhances the ongoing excellence of Ascension Seton Hays.
Without philanthropy, many non-profit hospitals struggle to secure funding for programmatic and equipment needs that are critical for growth. For safety net hospitals, such as ours, philanthropy is even more critical.
HERECARE STORIES FROM OUR COMMUNITY
Courtney & Beckett
Stacey
Shelby, Rowan, and Lana
Linda & Riley
Jewell & Jaxon
Dr. Kerr doesn’t want you to wait.
It is extremely rare to see an empty, or near-empty, Emergency Department (ED) waiting room. At Ascension Seton Hays, this has become an accomplishable goal thanks to the visionary leadership of Dr. Michael Kerr.
In 2021, Dr. Kerr began as the Director of the Emergency Department at Ascension Seton Hays. Dr. Kerr and the team immediately began troubleshooting a common problem in EDs: too many patients and not enough beds leading to long wait times. Many of the tactics they tried helped a little, but nothing truly worked until they implemented “Vertical Care” in 2023.
Vertical Care has taken everything nurses and emergency physicians are taught and turned those lessons on their head. When a patient arrives in the ED at Ascension Seton Hays, they are immediately evaluated by a nurse who registers the patient and determines which path to care they need—emergent or urgent. The sickest patients (emergent) are put in a hospital bed and seen by a physician. Patients who are considered urgent are placed in a chair where a team including a clinician, nurse and tech begins assessing and providing the care they need, including running any diagnostic tests, within 30 minutes. While a patient awaits test results, they are moved to another area where they are monitored by a nurse—ultimately freeing up a chair for another patient to begin receiving care.
Empowering both clinicians and nurses to triage and move patients around for improved flow and efficiency within the ED has made all the difference. Since the Vertical Care model was implemented, the average length of stay in the Ascension Seton Hays ED has decreased from 250 minutes to 150 minutes. But it’s not just positively impacted the time a patient spends in the ED. Required nurse interventions—anything from ordering patient meals, helping patients get to the bathroom, or providing blankets and pillows for comfort—has decreased by two-thirds, ensuring nurses are able to spend more time treating patients.
The Ascension Seton Hays ED has never slowed down in the time Dr. Kerr has been there. In fact, the volumes have continuously increased. With 28 beds, the Ascension Seton Hays ED cares for 140-160 patients each day and receives 70% of the EMS traffic across four counties.
“At Hays, we have every specialty, all of the best equipment, and everybody works well together,” says Dr. Kerr.
Help us raise the level of care for everyone.
Your generous support of HereCare is a powerful way to raise the quality of medical care close to home. Your contribution will touch the lives of mothers delivering their babies, teenagers hurt in car accidents, uncles suffering strokes, and sisters or brothers needing surgical care. With your help, we will do more than serve everyone, we will serve everyone with the highest quality medical care in our region. Ascension Seton Hays is your local hospital. Our staff are your neighbors and friends. And we are here for you.
Care for everyone.
Ascension Seton Hays is both our region’s safety net hospital—serving the un- or under-insured—and it is also the first choice for everyone needing high-level treatment or care. How do we do this? Philanthropy. Your philanthropic dollars enable us to expand alongside our rapidly growing community, to recruit the best and brightest medical minds, to care for all neighbors regardless of their ability to pay, and to offer the highest level of care to everyone. In other words, your donation ensures that our hospital is not just good, but great.