Willow Park Mayor Teresa Palmer’s friend recently suffered a stroke.

Palmer took her friend to Texas Health Willow Park, a medical campus that first opened in 2015. Medical personnel ultimately decided the friend’s treatment should be continued at the Fort Worth campus, but Palmer commended the care extended by the staff at the Willow Park facility. 

“They were wonderful with her,” she said. “They were so professional.”

The Willow Park campus is set to expand. Texas Health Resources announced last week that a full-fledged hospital will open on the grounds in 2028.

The hospital will be built adjacent to a neighborhood care facility and an orthopedic and spine surgery center. Expanding the campus will allow Texas Health to better serve the growing population of Parker County.

Palmer noted that “fortunately and unfortunately,” her community’s medical needs have increased along with the number of residents. Willow Park’s population grew from 4,936 to 6,851 in 2024, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The nearly 40% increase mimics Parker County’s growth of about 21% since 2020.

Josh Floren, senior vice president for the Hospital Channel at Texas Health, said the creation of a new hospital in Willow Park is “exactly in line” with what the system sees as the next step in services they provide in the county.

“The growth out that direction and toward Weatherford is continuing to increase. So it made a whole lot of sense to be able to put an inpatient service on the campus, because it already can support it,” Floren said. “It already has an ER there. It has all these other services that will complement a hospital.”

The facility will initially be “a smaller hospital” with “an orthopedic focus,” Floren said. Texas Hip and Knee, a Texas Health Physicians Group specializing in complex joint replacement, will be headquartered there. 

An additional purpose of the new facility is to help alleviate resources provided by the Texas Health system. Floren noted that expanding the Willow Park campus will help support larger hospitals in the area, including facilities in Fort Worth, by allowing more patients to go to Parker County for care.

The new hospital is not the end of potential expansion for the Willow Park campus. Although the 2028 project is the focal point, Floren said Texas Health is already looking at what else could be provided for the community in the future.

“We’re getting contacted by folks on a regular basis who are interested in being part of the project. Maybe even not in 2028; they may be thinking for their practice further out,” he said.

Texas Health is currently seeing enormous growth at its North Texas facilities. Alongside renovations at the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, the company is also constructing new buildings in Collin and Kaufman counties.

Ismael M. Belkoura is the health reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at ismael.belkoura@fortworthreport.org. 

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