Health Care

Long-planned hospital in Fort Mill on

track to open in September
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• Commercial Real EstateIndustry

• ConstructionTopic

• HospitalsTopic

• Tenet Healthcare Corp.Company

• Mark NosackaPerson

• Chris MitchellPerson
By Collin Huguley – Staff Writer, Charlotte Business Journal
Jul 22, 2022
After first seeking approval to build a new hospital in Fort Mill back in 2004, Tenet
Healthcare Corp.'s Piedmont Medical Center-Fort Mill is finally approaching its grand
opening.

Chris Mitchell, CEO of the new hospital, said the 200,000-square-foot, 100-bed facility
is targeting Sept. 7 to fully open and treat patients. Piedmont Medical Center-Fort Mill
will include an emergency department, intensive care unit and medical-surgical unit, as
well as women's services and other surgical services. A three-story, 60,000-square-foot
medical office building is also on the site at S.C. Highway 160 and U.S. Highway 21.

More than 15 years after applying to build the hospital, Piedmont Medical received
approval to do so in 2019. Construction on the long-awaited project began in the spring
of 2021. The facility will also complement the company's existing operations at the long-
standing Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill.

"It's been an incredible process," Mitchell said. "One of the most fun parts of it has been
the community supporting it. Now that they can see it physically, the support has been
overwhelming, to be honest with you. We're excited. It's been interesting, in terms of the
design and development for this. Once we received the (approval to build the hospital),
it overlapped with Covid. In essence, we designed this hospital via Zoom."

About 90% of the 250 employees that will be working there on opening day have already
been hired, Mitchell said. Hospital leaders will hold another hiring event on July 28.
Once the hospital has fully ramped up its operating capacity, Mitchell said it will be
home to 500 employees.

"Like all hospitals in America, we're challenged with getting enough people to take care
of all of the people," said Mark Nosacka, market CEO and CEO of Piedmont Medical
Center in Rock Hill. "So in that sense, we have been working really hard to attract staff.
The good news is this new facility is attracting people that maybe we wouldn't have
otherwise gotten to. So we've been able to attract almost the entire staff we need to open
the hospital. ... It is enabling us to also attract people to help us in Rock Hill as well. So
this has been a great boost to our recruitment initiatives."

Mitchell expects that early on, the emergency department will be busiest at the Fort Mill
hospital while the ramping up of other operations follows. He expects the trajectory
could be similar to Piedmont Medical's standalone emergency department on Gold Hill
Road, which he says doubled in volume within a year of its early 2020 opening.

Hospital leaders expressed pride in, after nearly two decades, being on the brink of
opening a Fort Mill hospital to provide more access to care that they say the community
needed years ago. It will also enable Piedmont Medical to have a more comprehensive
presence in York County.

"We've been wanting to build this hospital for many years and it is finally coming online,
so we're really excited about that accomplishment of having actually built it," Nosacka
said. "But we're more excited about what comes next."