York County lands another freestanding emergency department in fast-growing area
Piedmont Medical Center has plans for a new freestanding emergency department, this time in Lake Wylie.
Parent company Tenet Health applied for a permit in April to build a standalone emergency department at 233 Catamount Drive, York County records show. The permit is still under county review.
That address is near the Five Points intersection, on the north side of the Harris Teeter-anchored Westlake Village shopping center that’s under construction at S.C. 55 and S.C. 49.
The permit doesn’t list details like project size, cost or timeline for construction. A Piedmont representative declined to discuss the Lake Wylie project with The Herald.
A new emergency room would continue a trend for Piedmont, a company that’s added new facilities throughout the Rock Hill region in recent years as other large medical providers have staked claims to the area’s growing number of potential patients.
Piedmont emergency room, hospital growth
Piedmont Medical Center Fort Mill CEO Christopher Mitchell is scheduled to update Lancaster County Council on May 11 about the company’s freestanding emergency room in Indian Land. That 10,000-square-foot facility off Charlotte Highway, in the Parkstone at Indian Land development, is set to open within a couple of weeks.
The Indian Land project followed Piedmont’s first separate emergency room, the more than 17,000-square-foot Gold Hill Emergency Department that opened in 2020.
Piedmont opened its 100-bed hospital in Fort Mill four years ago, along with a large medical office building beside it.
Its 282-bed Rock Hill hospital opened in 1983. It was the only hospital in York County for decades. Piedmont will shift many of its women’s services, including labor and delivery, from the Rock Hill hospital to the Fort Mill one this week to meet growing demand.
More hospital competition in the Rock Hill region
Along with Piedmont’s new facilities, other healthcare providers have begun building in the Rock Hill region.
The Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston-based operator of hospitals in Lancaster and Chester, has a $300 million hospital and medical office building complex under construction in Indian Land. Charlotte-based Atrium Health approved $450 million late last year to build its own Fort Mill hospital.
York County Council worked in recent months to update its 911 call coverage system. The county partnered with Piedmont for decades as the only hospital in the area, with only a few volunteer rescue squads also providing service. Those volunteer units have now been brought into the budding Piedmont and Atrium rivalry.
Atrium bought Fort Mill EMS last year to start running ambulances in York County. Piedmont then bought River Hill/Lake Wylie EMS to assume its service.
Lake Wylie medical care growth
For Lake Wylie, a community that’s grown in recent decades from a sparse collection of river lots to one of the more urbanized areas in the Rock Hill region, a new Piedmont emergency department would join a growing list of offerings.
Gastonia, North Carolina-based CaroMont Health expanded into Lake Wylie with family medicine, vascular, neurology, pediatric and women’s services, along with an urgent care facility. There’s an Affinity Health Center in nearby Clover.
Lake Wylie also sits on the North Carolina border, giving residents access to medical options in neighboring Gaston or Mecklenburg counties. Atrium and other providers have grown considerably in recent years just north of Lake Wylie, in the Steele Creek area of Charlotte.
The Catamount Drive address for Piedmont’s latest project would put that emergency department in the Five Points area that’s poised to become Lake Wylie’s next phase of residential growth.
Several large subdivisions are underway in the area, with others planned. The property is two miles north of Lake Wylie High School, set to open this fall.