Ahead of expected council vote, Austin Planning Commission weighs hospital safety

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The Austin City Council is preparing to vote Thursday on an ordinance to make hospitals safer in direct response to a series of KXAN investigations following a deadly ER crash earlier this year -- one of hundreds of similar crashes we found across the country in the past decade.

Not everyone is on board.

Pushback on potential change to protect patients

"We've had some, they said, 'We don't like being forced to do this either through site plans or our existing facilities,'" Curtis Beaty with the Austin Transportation Department, told the Austin Planning Commission, recalling recent conversations with unnamed area medical facility operators.

"What is that going to do to -- I don't want to be flippant -- but their architectural, and their vision of how they want to present their facilities," Beaty told the APC, sharing some of the cosmetic concerns relayed to him.

The meeting comes nearly 10 months after a driver, who had a blood-alcohol level between three and four times the legal limit to drive, according to an autopsy, crashed into St. David's North Austin Medical Center, killing herself and seriously injuring five, including two toddlers.

"Would bollards have been helpful in that case?" APC Board Member Danielle Skidmore asked.

"There's a potential," said Beaty. "Yes."

At Tuesday's meeting, KXAN's investigation was referenced several times along with our findings that State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, and Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, are looking into state and federal bollard measures in response to our reports.

"I was reading the KXAN report that was talking about how many facilities they found without bollards, which ones did have bollards," APC Board Member Grayson Cox said during the meeting.

"If you look up the news articles from KXAN, they show you the bollards that they installed at the hospital that had this accident," Cox said at another point.

Some expressed concern over the Austin City Council's upcoming final vote to require crash-rated security barriers, called bollards, at new hospitals, urgent care clinics and stand-alone emergency rooms -- a safety measure currently not required by any local, state or federal laws even though experts say, and KXAN saw firsthand at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, they are effective at stopping a speeding vehicle.

Safety beyond hospitals

"Does it raise some concerns with y'all's department that we're not looking at this more broadly?" asked APC Board Member Felicity Maxwell. "Or, how can we be using safety bollards in situations to more effectively prevent crash deaths?"

"Was there any conversation about expanding that to other types of facilities like child care facilities?" asked APC Board Member Ryan Johnson.

"That question was probably the number one question we've got," said Beaty. "We've gone through this process, why didn't we expand this to libraries, child care facilities, recreational facilities? And, basically, staff needed to respond directly to what the resolution was and the resolution had a very narrow window."

If requested, the ordinance could "quite easily" be expanded to include other types of facilities, like child care centers, he said.

A decade ago, a four-year-old girl was killed and 11 children were injured when a SUV ran a convertible off the road and into a day care center near Orlando, Florida. In 2016, Orange County commissioners passed the "Lily Quintus Ordinance" to require safety barriers at all new day care centers.

Recently, KXAN visited 10 federally leased buildings housing the IRS, OSHA and the Social Security Administration. While most were designed so security barriers aren’t needed, we found at least three without bollards, or where doorways were only partially protected, including buildings housing the Social Security Administration, OSHA and the IRS.

The Storefront Safety Council, which has tracked 30,000 vehicle-into-building crashes and shared some of its data with KXAN, said these type of accidents happen, on average, 100 times a day.

"They happen where we live, work, play and shop," said SSC co-founder Rob Reiter, who has been contacted by Council Member Zo Qadri's office about a downtown bollard measure and is working as a consultant in a $1 million lawsuit against St. David's NAMC filed by the Bernard family, who were badly hurt in the February crash.

"More people die in these storefront crashes than die in weather events in the United States every year," Reiter said. "These things are foreseeable. They're predictable. And they're preventable."

St. David's NAMC, which doesn't comment on pending or active litigation, is accused of "gross negligence" for not having bollards. It installed a dozen after the crash and following our questions.

“St. David’s HealthCare will work with policymakers to ensure compliance with any new legal or regulatory requirement, if they are passed,” the hospital group said in a statement after the July vote.

A recommendation, not needed, postponed

APC Board Member Alice Woods asked if a "comprehensive breakdown of how many hospitals are already using bollards at their entrances" was conducted.

"We did not take a comprehensive survey," said Beaty, who noted the city did find "a number" of hospitals with "some type of barrier."

Earlier this year, KXAN asked that same question. We visited dozens of hospitals across Central Texas and found at least 16 with partial or no protection.

The APC ultimately voted nine to four to postpone a decision to recommend the bollard ordinance, choosing instead to discuss it again on Jan. 28. Johnson opposed postponing a recommendation saying it would be "OK for us to make a small step in the right direction now and continue working on this issue."

It may not matter.

The resolution to request a bollard ordinance -- introduced by Council Member Mackenzie Kelly after watching our investigations -- received unanimous support from the City Council in July. According to the agenda for Thursday's meeting, the council is "waiving the requirement" for the commission's review.

"I look forward to the public hearing on item 74 regarding hospital bollards, an item I have been working on for months," Kelly said in a statement to KXAN. "Bollards have the potential to save lives, and it is heartening to know we can move forward on council without a recommendation from the Planning Commission."

This will be one of the final items Kelly aims to see through. Her term is up at the end of the month.

"The public deserves to have their voices heard on this important safety measure for our community," she added.