UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty & Research Hospital
- Addressing a projected 56 percent rise in cancer cases in South Texas, the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty & Research Hospital reduces patient travel burdens with localized advanced care.
- The 448,000-square-foot facility combines clinical care, education, and research in one facility, fostering real-time learning and collaboration.
- To deliver the medical school’s first hospital, the design team, including Page, now Stantec and Alamo Architects, had to create a new platform for clinical learning that supports teaching, mentorship, and rapid decision-making alongside patient care.
Within a 100-mile radius of San Antonio, cancer volumes are projected to increase by 56 percent over the next decade—more than double the national growth rate of 22 percent, according to strategic advisory firm Scout Strategy, which is part of Stantec. This translates to roughly 14,000 additional cancer cases annually by 2033.
Historically, many patients from the San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, Laredo, and Rio Grande Valley areas in Texas have traveled three to five hours to reach specialty providers in Houston. That long journey, often repeated for follow-up visits, has meant added costs, physical strain, and sometimes skipped appointments due to the burden of travel.
UT Health San Antonio, the academic health center of The University of Texas at San Antonio (UT San Antonio) comprising academics, research, and clinical services, recognized the need for advanced inpatient care, especially cancer treatment, in South Texas. To address the issue, UT San Antonio set out to deliver its first hospital—a project that would advance a long-standing institutional goal to bring academic medicine, research, and clinical care together in a single integrated setting.
Developed in partnership with Page, now Stantec (Houston and Dallas), and Alamo Architects (San Antonio), the new UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty & Research Hospital opened in December 2024, serving San Antonio and the South Texas region.
The facility functions as both a clinical care center and a hub for research and education for the next generation of clinicians. Faculty, staff, and students from UT San Antonio’s Long School of Medicine, who practice and teach in other health systems’ facilities, now have an additional site for clinical practice and teaching. The 448,000-square-foot facility also brings care closer to home for many patients, reducing average travel times, and thereby supporting more timely treatment, improved continuity of care, and less strain on patients and families.
Designing a hospital built for teaching and clinical collaboration
As the medical school’s first hospital, the design team had to create a new platform for clinical learning that supports teaching, mentorship, and rapid decision-making alongside patient care. Rather than separating learning from care delivery, the hospital is organized so that teaching and collaboration occur within the same environments where care is delivered.
Specifically, Level 1 brings together public arrival, emergency and urgent care services related to cancer treatment, advanced imaging, pharmacy, support services, a clinical lab, and small research office suite. The second level houses the hospital’s procedural platform, including operating rooms, interventional radiology, endoscopy, prep and recovery areas, the anatomic pathology lab, and blood bank. Levels 3-8 form the patient tower, with inpatient units above the podium, including a bone marrow transplant medical/surgical unit on the third level.
The stacking strategy supports a teaching hospital model by placing diagnostic, procedural, inpatient, and research-related functions in close operational relationship. This allows learning to happen where patient care occurs, including at the bedside, in imaging rooms, and in procedural spaces, where medical students, residents, fellows, and clinical teams can work in real time around the patient. Additionally, these rooms are planned to accommodate multiple practitioners at once, supporting active rounding, observation, and case-based learning without requiring separate classroom space within the hospital.
Embedding research and clinical trials into everyday care
The hospital integrates advanced clinical trials directly into patient care, too, focusing on cancer, orthopedics, and neurodegenerative diseases. Rapid translation of laboratory discoveries occurs within the 22,000-square-foot clinical lab and the hospital’s imaging platform, which includes MRI, CT, X-ray, fluoroscopy, and nuclear medicine located on Level 1. The strategy supports the development of personalized immunotherapies and cellular therapies. Research is conducted by a team of clinicians and researchers working across the clinical and ancillary service areas, as well as at the bedside, to optimize patient outcomes.
Within procedure, imaging, and patient care rooms, the facility provides a multidisciplinary care space, medical equipment, and technology integrated directly into the clinical environments to support a hands-on training experience, including in stem cell transplantation, lymphoma management, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, for medical students, residents, and fellows. To further enhance these connections, a skybridge connects the hospital to the Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio, allowing students to work across both inpatient and outpatient cancer care.
How to plan a hospital for flexibility and expansion
While the 448,000-square-foot hospital currently focuses on advanced cancer services, closely tied to the adjacent Mays Cancer Center, the facility is designed to support future expansion into orthopedic and neurological specialties. This long-term growth was anticipated in the original master plan and refined during construction.
For example, both horizontal and vertical expansion are built into the design: The basement infrastructure includes zones for additional equipment and capped, valved extensions for future chilled water connections. Additionally, Level 1 is planned to extend horizontally through corridor extensions with strategically placed knockout panels that can be removed when new space is added. Existing stair towers are also designed to serve a future inpatient bed tower, allowing the campus to expand while using portions of the current structure.
With a focus on prioritizing patient comfort, daylight access, and long-term building performance, the design team rotated the 6-story bed tower 45 degrees from the podium’s orthogonal grid to face south. This orientation provides consistent daylight, minimizes glare, and frames views of the Texas Hill Country—features that contribute to a more supportive healing environment.
The bed tower positioning also reduces direct east-west sun exposure, lowering solar heat gain and helping decrease cooling loads on the building’s glazing system. This setup required structural transfer beams to shift the column grid between the podium and tower levels. The rotated tower does not align with the podium’s structural grid below, so the vertical columns cannot continue directly to the foundation. Instead, loads are transferred through deep structural beams to columns positioned differently at the lower levels.
While this added structural complexity and cost, the team and client deemed it a worthwhile investment in patient experience and long-term energy performance.
Using sustainable and biophilic design to support patient well-being
Sustainability is embedded throughout. In Southwest Texas, where water scarcity is an ongoing concern, the design incorporates strategies to reduce consumption. Efficient plumbing fixtures throughout the facility help lower indoor water use, while native landscape materials are selected to minimize the need for traditional irrigation.
Furthermore, the project team used a biophilic design approach to strengthen patients’ connection to nature and support well-being throughout the hospital experience. For example, a long pedestrian connector links the main lobby near the drop-off and transport platform to the bridge leading to the Mays Cancer Center, a route traveled frequently by patients, visitors, and staff.
To make the journey feel restorative rather than purely functional, windows along one side of the corridor frame the surrounding Hill Country, while the opposite wall features a rotating art gallery with local and museum-quality works.
The passage concludes at a café with an outdoor terrace, offering patients, visitors, and staff a place to pause and spend time outside. Together, these elements introduce natural light, landscape views, and moments of respite within the hospital’s circulation spaces.
Platform for growth
As cancer volumes continue to rise, the hospital’s role in care, education, and research will expand. The project’s architecture and infrastructure support that growth, with flexible clinical spaces and systems that can accommodate new specialties, evolving technologies, and expanded patient services over time.
What was once a long-standing institutional goal is now a platform for advanced cancer care, education, and research serving patients across South Texas.
Charles Griffin is a principal and healthcare director at Stantec (Houston) and can be reached at [email protected]. Mark Vaughan is a principal and healthcare lead planning director at Stantec (Dallas) and can be reached at [email protected].
UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty & Research Hospital project details
Location: San Antonio
Completion date: December 2024
Owner: UT Health San Antonio
Total building area: 448,000 sq. ft.
Total construction cost: $292 million
Cost/sq. ft.: $652.60
Architect: Page, now Stantec; Alamo Architects
Interior designer: Page, now Stantec
General contractor: Vaughn Construction
Engineer: Intelligent Engineering Services, LLP (civil/structural), Coleman & Associates (landscape), Shah Smith and Associates (MEP), 4b Technology (low-voltage)
Builder: Vaughn Construction
Art consultant: Turning Art
Medical equipment planner: Covalus
Art/pictures: Ansen Seale
AV equipment/electronics/software: Hubbell, Legrand, Great Lakes Data Racks & Cabinets, Bogen/Quam/Atlas/TOA/Bosch, Jeron, Primex
Carpet/flooring: Shaw Contract, Parterre, Tarkett & Armstrong Flooring, Camarata, Key Resin Company, Dex-O-Tex, Horizon Italian Tile, Thorntree Slate, Crossville, Trinity Tile, Portugal Porcelain Stone, Daltile
Ceiling/wall systems: Armstrong, CS Acrovyn, ASST, Salado
Doors/locks/hardware: ASSA Abloy / Corbin Russwin
Handrails/wall guards: CS Acrovyn
Headwalls/booms: AMICO, ASST, Stryker
Lighting: Fail-Safe, Utopia, Neo-Ray, Lumenwerx, Focal Point, Sky Factory
Signage/wayfinding: Facilities Solutions Group, Hardman
Surfaces—solid/other: Corian
Wallcoverings: CS Acrovyn
Project details are provided by the design team and not vetted by Healthcare Design.
