“Baylor Scott & White Medical Center-Pflugerville will open mid-2018”

Community Impact Newspaper  
February 06, 2017

A FOIA request for hospital plans led us to 55 pages of documents filed with the city of Pflugerville. It’s the first hospital for the city that borders Austin and Round Rock, both of which have several medical facilities. While Baylor Scott & White staff at the Dallas corporate offices wanted to keep an announcement for a later date, they worked with us to break information that day and along the way, while other Austin-area newspapers and TV stations cited us for the announcement. Since our original story in early January, BS&W worked with us to break the groundbreaking story on Jan. 24 and our paper and website broke details of the hospital on Feb. 6. For several days we worked with the hospital staff and city officials on our story. In this case, FOIA afforded us the opportunity to ask the right questions and move forward with coverage-breaking coverage, which is rare for a small, monthly newspaper.

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Submitted by Joe Warner.