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Piedmont Medical Center Applies to Build New Hospital

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Julie Graham, The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C.

Oct. 9--Piedmont Medical Center seems to have the advantage by being the only South Carolina-based hospital in the running to build York County's second hospital.

PMC, in competition with three other hospitals to build in the fast-growing Fort Mill area, submitted a new application to the state on Thursday for a 100-bed hospital. The hospital wants to move 36 beds to Fort Mill from its 288-bed Rock Hill hospital.

The other hospitals, all located in Charlotte, cannot cross state lines and relocate beds. They have to stick with 64-bed plans, based on the 2004 State Health Plan that measured population growth.

PMC caught its competitors off guard last Friday when announcing it would change its proposal from 64 to 100 beds.

"There's nothing illegal about it," said Joel Grice of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, the agency that determines who will build. "It's like any contest. You're thinking of every way possible to come out ahead."

PMC is licensed by the state to have 288 beds in Rock Hill. So in applying to build another hospital, it will have to show a need for 100 beds in Fort Mill, Grice said.

PMC had 266 beds set up and staffed in 2004, with an average daily census of 200 patients, the new Piedmont application says.

Seventeen of the 36 beds that PMC wants to transfer are not even set up.

Fourteen would come from a vacated unit on the fourth floor of the women's tower, and five are being used as medical/surgical beds.

Grice said it's common for a hospital to be licensed for more beds than it needs, and many times not all the beds are set up.

Charlie Miller, PMC's president and chief executive officer, said by the time a Fort Mill hospital is opened and occupied, 64 beds would be inadequate for the rapidly growing area.

"We have every reason to believe it will support the additional beds," he said.

Miller expects to start construction in 2007 for the five-story hospital to be occupied by 2010. That's when the 36-beds would officially move from Rock Hill.

"Those beds don't go anywhere until we turn the lights on in Fort Mill," he said.

PMC officials have studied the demand in Rock Hill and are not concerned with compromising services there.

Piedmont wants to build a $125 million, 221,895-square-foot hospital on 40 acres at the corner of S.C. 160 and U.S. 21 in Fort Mill. The facility, proposed to be called Fort Mill Medical Center, could later expand to 250 beds.

PMC is competing with three other hospitals -- Carolinas HealthCare System, Hospital Partners of America and Presbyterian Healthcare.

All the hospitals have been working to win over area councils and residents for support so they will be chosen by DHEC to build.

PMC's proposal change came as a surprise to the other hospitals. The four already had submitted applications to DHEC and were waiting for a public hearing to be scheduled. PMC withdrew its first application and submitted a new one on Thursday.

As a result, no public hearing date has been set, and the decision on who will build the hospital has been pushed back to next year.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C.

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Source: The Herald

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