Round Rock's hospital explosion reached a milestone Thursday when Scott & White's University Medical Campus observed its traditional "topping off" ceremony, marking that construction on the 271,000-square-foot clinic and hospital has reached its highest point.

"What you're building represents hope, healing and, in many cases, saving lives," hospital CEO Ernie Bovio told about 200 construction workers and Scott & White officials.

When completed this April or May, the hospital will house 75 beds. It is connected to a Scott & White clinic that is nearing completion and is set to open this October.

Scott & White says the construction is ahead of schedule.

So far, says Houston-based hospital contractor Vaughn Construction Co., the hospital contains 10,000 cubic yards of concrete -- a far cry from the first load that was poured just a few months ago in February.

So much is the area's population growing, says Bovio, that Scott & White already has plans to expand the hospital to 300 beds in the next seven to ten years. That would be done by doubling its 75-bed capacity and then doubling it again to meet increased demand.

"If things go as expected," he says, "we should be in expansion mode in three years."

Scott & White's new hospital on Chandler Road joins a list of others under construction in Williamson County -- three of them on Chandler Road itself.

The Seton Healthcare Network and Triad Hospitals Inc. formed a joint venture to construct a $105 million, 260,000 square-foot, 151-bed hospital in the Williamson County suburb of Cedar Park at the crossroads of U.S. Highway 183A and State Highway 1431 (which becomes Chandler when it crosses I-35). And Seton has another hospital, the 180-bed Seton Williamson County Medical Center, underway just a little over a mile east of Scott & White's hospital on Chandler.

St. Davids Health Care Partnership's Round Rock Medical Center is located just southwest of the Chandler Road hospital corridor on Ranch Road 620.