Project Summary:
This story is part of KXAN’s “Preventing Disaster” investigation, which initially published on May 15, 2024. The project follows a fatal car crash into an Austin hospital’s emergency room earlier that year. Our team took a broader look at safety concerns with that crash and hundreds of others across the nation – including whether medical sites had security barriers – known as bollards – at their entrances. Experts say those could stop crashes from happening.
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A bill that would require crash-rated safety bollards at most Texas hospitals, sparked by a deadly crash at St. David's North Austin Medical Center last year and a series of KXAN investigations, is set to be heard Monday morning by the House Public Health Committee.
For months, the proposal to mandate the vertical security barriers had placed a wedge between the state's nurses, which back the bill, and the lobbyist arm representing the hospitals paying them.
"The safety of nurses and hospital staff should be the highest priority of any healthcare organization," the Texas Nurses Association previously told KXAN. "Any and all protection should be considered to ensure our healthcare providers can come to work with confidence that they are protected and working in a safe environment."
While the bill has attracted bipartisan support, it has also found fierce opposition from the Texas Hospital Association — which called Senate Bill 660 a "one-size-fits-all" mandate and an "unreasonable administrative cost burden."
READ: Senate Bill 660 requires crash-tested bollards at most Texas hospitals"Vehicle-into-building crashes are undeniably tragic, but we’ve yet to see any national studies or scientific evidence that show prevention of these incidents is a pressing, critical need for hospital safety," THA CEO John Hawkins previously wrote.
Since the bill already cleared the Senate, it would need to advance out of the House Public Health Committee and go to a full floor vote before it could be sent to the governor. If that happens, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission would have until Dec. 1 to adopt rules laying out how it would work. With the exception of rural areas, hospitals would have to comply as of Jan. 1, 2026.
Levi and Nadia Bernard with their toddlers, Sunny and Rio, left, before being run over by a car in the lobby of St. David's North Austin Medical Center. (Source: Austin Police Department)KXAN reached out to St. David's for comment but did not immediately hear back. We previously asked Ascension, Ally Medical, Baylor Scott & White, and Texas Children's Hospital if they supported the bollard bill. All attended a stakeholder meeting to give input on Austin's bollard ordinance last September. So far, none have responded.
EXPLORE: KXAN's "Preventing Disaster" investigations led to legislative resultsPreventing Disaster
KXAN began investigating hospital crashes — what cause them, how often they occur and how they can be prevented — following a deadly crash at St. David's North Austin Medical Center on Feb. 13, 2024.
St. David’s North Austin Medical Center added a dozen bollards outside its ER after the fatal crash on Feb. 13. (Courtesy Howry, Breen & Herman)We learned there was no local, state or federal requirement for critical infrastructures, like hospitals, to have bollards. Using crash data from the Texas Department of Transportation, the nonprofit Storefront Safety Council, along with police, fire and media reports, we created our database revealing more than 400 crashes at or into medical-related sites across the country over the past decade resulting in more than 20 deaths — data KXAN shared with lawmakers and testified about in front of a Senate panel in March.
Those statistics were cited by Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, who authored the bollard bill after a family injured in the Austin emergency room crash spoke out publicly to KXAN.
“We re-emphasize to the Bernard family: What happened to you is a tragedy and it shouldn’t happen again in the state of Texas,” West told KXAN last October. “And, I’m going to do everything I can in my power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
READ: St. David's statement on opposition to Austin's bollard ordinanceThe Texas Medical Association, which represents 60,000 physicians and medical students, has not taken a position on the bill but previously said what KXAN uncovered was a "major problem" and, recently, presented us with an award for our coverage.
“If we can even save one life, and we can make sure it’s safer for not only the people that are going to the hospitals, like our patients, but also all employees, I think it’s a good thing to be doing," TMA President Dr. Ray Callas previously said.
The bill's latest hearing comes nearly six months after the Austin City Council unanimously passed its own bollard measure — also sparked by our investigations — requiring crash-tested bollards at new hospitals, urgent care clinics and stand alone emergency rooms. After the vote, public records KXAN obtained revealed St. David's, while publicly neutral, privately opposed the measure. Their lobbyist, records show, tried to quash it over St. David's objections that it, in part, "selectively targets healthcare facilities based on an incident at one of our hospitals."
St. David's said it spent $500,000 last year installing additional bollards before the council's vote. It has repeatedly refused to say whether those barriers are crash-rated — something the ordinance requires of new medical facilities.
Former Austin City Council Member Mackenzie Kelly initiated that ordinance. She is expected to testify again in front of the House committee. In March, she told a Senate panel: “This is not a partisan issue. This is a life-safety issue.”
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