Small businesses in San Antonio buying group health coverage through Texicare just got a bigger menu of doctors to choose from. As of August 15, the insurer's network expanded by 96 CHRISTUS Health providers and 29 clinic locations spanning Bexar and Comal counties, adding specialties from cardiology to pediatrics to a plan lineup that launched in the city less than a year ago.
The expansion, first detailed by citybiz, means Texicare members can now tap CHRISTUS providers across all three of the insurer's plan options, whether they're enrolled in SavingsCare, TotalCare, or SimplicityCare. The new network additions cover neuroscience, orthopedics, primary care, emergency medicine, women's health, and more, giving small employers a fuller set of specialties than they had when Texicare first arrived in San Antonio with plans effective October 1, 2025, according to Community Impact. Texicare currently serves hundreds of members in the city.
A 155-Year-Old San Antonio Institution Joins the Network
CHRISTUS Health's presence in San Antonio isn't new — it traces back to November 1869, when three Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word opened the city's first private hospital, the nine-bed Santa Rosa Infirmary, during a cholera epidemic, according to the citybiz report. That facility eventually grew into what is now CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System and CHRISTUS Children's, a freestanding hospital dedicated to children and expectant mothers that's part of the newly expanded network.
Today CHRISTUS Health is an Irving-based, faith-based nonprofit system operating over 600 healthcare centers and more than 60 hospitals across the United States, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, with roughly 50,000 employees. Chris Glenney, senior vice president and chief operating officer for U.S. ministries at CHRISTUS Health, said the agreement will extend the system's reach to more employees and families throughout San Antonio, per the report.
Why a Workers' Comp Insurer Is Selling Health Plans
Texicare exists because of a 2021 change in state law. House Bill 3752 authorized Texas Mutual Insurance Company — the state's dominant workers' compensation carrier, with a 41.4% market share and more than 80,000 businesses insured — to create a health benefit subsidiary aimed at small employers, according to Texas Mutual. Texas Mutual, created by the state legislature in 1991 and known as the state's insurer of last resort, operates the subsidiary through TXM Holdings LLC and has committed $300 million in capital funding to build out Texicare's operations and provider network, per Simplify.
Meredith Duncan, CEO of Texicare, said CHRISTUS delivers the kind of integrated and accessible care Texicare members are looking for. “San Antonio business owners want to take care of their people,” Duncan said, according to citybiz.
The Coverage Gap Texicare Is Chasing
The stakes behind that expansion are significant. Texas posted the nation's highest uninsured rate in 2024 at 16.7%, or roughly 5.1 million people — more than double the national average of 8.0%, according to Wise Insurance. Much of that gap traces to small employers specifically: roughly 68% of small businesses in Texas don't offer health insurance to their workers, even though two-thirds of the state's uninsured population belongs to working families, per data from the Episcopal Health Foundation.
Texicare targets employers with 2 to 50 workers, and its plans include benefits like four $0 visits across categories such as primary care, specialist, urgent care, and mental health under its TotalCare option, plus physical therapy visits. SavingsCare pairs potentially lower monthly premiums with a health savings account option, while SimplicityCare offers copays without deductibles. Beyond San Antonio, Texicare also offers plans in El Paso, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa, Amarillo, San Angelo, and Houston.
Building Out Beyond the Doctor's Office
The CHRISTUS deal follows a string of moves to round out Texicare's offerings. In January, the insurer partnered with Virta Health to give members zero-cost virtual metabolic care aimed at Type 2 diabetes reversal, a condition affecting roughly one in eight Texas adults. The following month, Texicare teamed up with Ameritas to launch six standalone dental plans with access to more than 14,000 dental providers statewide, including rollover rewards and deductible-free options. The insurer had earlier contracted with virtual care platform CirrusMD in 2024 to give members 24/7 on-demand text-based telehealth access without needing a scheduled appointment.
Even with a bigger network and expanding benefits, the harder sell may still be convincing risk-averse small business owners to offer coverage at all in a state where nearly seven in ten currently don't. For now, Texicare's bet is that pairing Texas Mutual's commercial reach with CHRISTUS Health's long-standing local footprint will chip away at that resistance one small employer at a time.
