‘Somebody’s gotta do it’

Joyce and Denny Houlihan made one of the first lead gifts to build Children’s Medical Center Plano. Two decades later, a nearly 400,000-square-foot tower has opened to care for more kids closer to home.

Two decades ago, Joyce and Denny Houlihan planted their legacy in a building a couple miles from the Dallas North Tollway in Collin County.

There, on the 180-acre campus, horses roamed the open grassy area and there was a century-old red oak tree.

But the vision was revolutionary for the community: Build a Children’s Health hospital in Plano so pediatric patients and their families could receive care closer to home.

Joyce and Denny were among the first donors to make lead gifts to the construction of Children’s Medical Center Plano. And since then, as more and more families and companies have flooded the northern suburbs, they’ve watched their seed of an investment grow and provide lifesaving care to children in their neighborhood.

This fall, the hospital opened its new, nearly 400,000-square-foot patient tower – a milestone for a project that Joyce is proud to have believed in from the beginning.

“We knew the community would embrace it. Denny and I have always been forward thinkers with the philosophy of ‘somebody’s gotta do it,’” said Joyce, who served on the steering committee for construction of the Plano campus after Denny’s health declined and later was a member of the board of directors for Children’s Health Plano and Children’s Medical Center Foundation.

The new tower reflects Children’s Health’s commitment to grow alongside its community. As the leading health care provider for children in North Texas, Children’s Health has expanded the expert pediatric care it provides at its Plano campus to give more families north of Dallas access to world-class, highly specialized care.

Space was strategically designed to provide the needed infrastructure for innovation and cross-team collaboration. Patient rooms were created for comfort, including circadian rhythm lighting, a double sleeper sofa, larger storage area, and video game storage beneath TV screens.

Beyond the physical space, more than 400 new team members were hired to help provide world-class care for more children in the hospital than ever before.

For many years, Joyce and Denny have invested in the training of team members at the Plano hospital, establishing the Joyce Houlihan Graduate Nurse Resident Fund dedicated to support the orientation and training of resident nurses at the northern campus.

Joyce is a registered nurse who has done everything from opening critical care units to writing the first infection control program.

For Joyce and Denny – an entrepreneur who founded Sage Telecom in the mid-1990s – investments in the training of people who care for patients is just as important to the advancement of pediatric medicine as is building a state-of–the–art facility.

“If we’re going to have a top-notch hospital, then we need top-notch nurses inside it,” Joyce said. “Whenever I drive by the Plano campus, I think, ‘wow.’ I can’t explain how I feel about it and what it has done for Collin County without getting emotional.”

What to know about the Plano expansion  

• Broke ground on the milestone project in 2021
• As the leading health care provider for children in North Texas, this expansion allows us to give more families north of Dallas access to world-class, highly specialized care closer to home.
• More than 400 team members were added to the staff at Children’s Medical Center Plano to care for a growing pediatric population
• Our new 395,000-square-foot patient tower includes 140 new inpatient beds and strengthened specialty services and programs.
• Our updated ER has doubled in size with 48 exam rooms, providing transformative equipment and resources critical to building a Level II trauma center.
• In 2023, team members at Children’s Medical Center Plano saw a total number of 193,484 patient visits.