‘A heart to care for others’: How the new Fort Mill hospital plans to find its nurses
It’s been a long wait in Fort Mill for a new hospital. As opening nears, it’s not just the building Mark Nosacka has to get ready. It’s the people who will provide care, who will help save lives.
Nosacka, Piedmont Medical Center CEO, said Thursday the hospital under construction at S.C. 160 and U.S. 21 Bypass has a CEO hired in chief strategy officer Chris Mitchell. Most department heads for the new Fort Mill hospital are hired. There’s a human resources director in place to fill more roles. What remains are many of the nurses needed to run a hospital.
Piedmont has a Jan. 27 hiring event planned at the Marriott hotel in Kingsley. Information will be given and interviews held for roles in the full-service emergency department, six multi-specialty operating rooms in surgical services, 76 medical or surgical recovery beds, 10 labor and delivery rooms in obstetrics and 10 intensive care units beds.
Healthcare, like many other industries, faces a limited workforce pool amid ongoing impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. A need for nurses at a new hospital — full staff will be about 300 employees — is daunting. Nosacka said he’s encouraged by models that predict a crest and fall of COVID cases which should lead to workforce stability in coming months across industries, including healthcare. He’s confident the hospital will find its workers, despite the immediate outlook.
“Right now, it’s a challenge,” Nosacka said.
Then, there are nurses who stepped away from healthcare during the pandemic but may be ready to return. Piedmont will offer opportunities to test and train ahead of the Fort Mill opening.
“The hiring event is about reintroducing us to the workforce,” Nosacka said.
The labor market is just the latest challenge for Piedmont. A state decision on which hospital provider would be able to build in Fort Mill, through the state certificate of need program, spent more than a decade in courts. In that time, Fort Mill grew. The town hasn’t stopped growing. Everything in a hospital gets measured and Piedmont has done plenty to study the Fort Mill market, Nosacka said. Still, the hospital ultimately approved for construction was applied for when Fort Mill was a much smaller community.
“We were approved for a 100-bed hospital,” Nosacka said, “so we’re building a 100-bed hospital.”
Since Piedmont applied to build the hospital in 2005, the town’s population has more than doubled. There are as many students in Fort Mill schools today as there were residents in the entire town then. Which doesn’t include unincorporated Fort Mill and other high-growth areas nearby the hospital could serve.
There have been other healthcare projects. Piedmont opened a freestanding emergency room on Gold Hill Road in early 2020, with 40 employees. It’s right off I-77 and works in conjunction with the main Piedmont hospital in Rock Hill as care dictates. Non-Piedmont projects include the Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital off Pleasant Road, a Medical University of South Carolina plan to move hospital beds to Indian Land and numerous smaller, memory care or assisted-care facilities.
The Gold Hill emergency room is a good model for how hospitals in Fort Mill and Rock Hill will work together. The Fort Mill site will have an emergency room, imaging and surgery on its first floor with intensive care and women’s services on the second. Surgical and impatient space will be on the third. The Fort Mill site will have the latest equipment and its own specialties, but some care like major trauma or open heart surgeries will still utilize the Rock Hill site.
The past two years, Nosacka said, have shown how that partnership can work between Gold Hill and Rock Hill. He sees the hospitals and emergency room as part of a larger campus network to provide the best care when and where it’s needed. A Fort Mill hospital is about convenience for people who live on its side of the river, but also about timely, critical care.
“The emergency room is about saving lives,” Nosacka said. “We’re going to be doing things that save lives. We’re going to be doing things closer to home.”
Construction should wrap up in Fort Mill in early summer. Training and prep work, utilizing the Rock Hill hospital, will come ahead of a full opening in Fort Mill after Labor Day. Rock Hill patients won’t notice changes there, Nosacka said. The Fort Mill site will add to care, not take it from Rock Hill.
Despite years of study in Fort Mill, Nosacka said once the hospital there opens his group will have a much better understand of the care needed. Patient numbers and needs will show Piedmont how to focus its care in Fort Mill.
Piedmont just needs to get the employees in place, first. Even with the challenges related to nurse hiring, Nosacka is confident the right people are out there.
“There’s a lot of people out there who have a heart to care for others,” he said.
Want to go?
A nurse hiring event for the new Fort Mill hospital will be held 4-7 p.m. Jan. 27 at the Marriott hotel in Kingsley, 1385 Broadcloth St, Fort Mill. For more information, visit myPMC.com/FortMill.
This story was originally published January 18, 2022 at 2:00 AM.
