When Scott & White's Round Rock hospital opened three years ago, it seemed the intensive care unit and all other departments had the resources and staff necessary to keep up with demand.

"The demand for services has been better than expected," Scott & White Healthcare - Round Rock CEO Ernie Bovio said. "In retrospect, we built our ICU a little bit too small."

Right now, the ICU has six beds, just as Williamson County has seen 21,000 residents move into the area between Jan. 2008 and Jan. 2009. According to the Texas Data Center, the county could see as many as 125,000 more people over the next five years. It's that unpredictable growth, combined with current demand and nearly-full operating rooms that has local medical centers like Scott & White striving to expand.

"In order to accommodate that demand, we're having to expand the hospital now," Bovio said. "The growth in Williamson County for health care services has been tremendous over the last 3 to 4 years."

Scott & White's Round Rock hospital will break ground in October on expansions that will add 20 beds to the ICU and create more space for intensive care. Hospital administrators expect the expansion to be completed by Dec. 2011, at which point phase two can begin. That could include an inpatient bed tower.

Bovio said growth patterns will cause the emergency department to reach full capacity in the next 12 months.

A pending merger with Johns Community Hospital in Taylor and Scott & White serves to expound the trend. Scott & White operates a neighboring clinic, and Bovio said they plan to allocate more resources to the community clinic as well.

Past and future population increases have also affected Seton Medical Center Williamson.

"We've already exceeded our projected plans. Our intensive care days have been higher than budgeted," Chief Nursing Officer Melanie Fox said. "One of the things that's grown quite a bit, and it might be the way our population is here, is patients that have experienced stroke and neurological conditions."

By Christmas, Seton Williamson should be able to open an entire fifth medical floor, and will then begin looking to its second phase: a 350-bed tower. The timing for that will depend on population growth and how that affects operations.

Lone Star Circle of Care, which runs clinics for the uninsured and underinsured, plans to open pediatric clinics in Hutto and Cedar Park in coming months. Meanwhile, St. David's Georgetown Hospital will finish more than $6 million in expansions this fall that will allow more space for surgery, labor and delivery.