Novant Health plans to apply for a certificate of need to build an “outpatient-focused” hospital in Greenville, S.C., according to a notice on the health system’s website.
The Winston-Salem, N.C.-based system will partner with local physicians on the proposed 20-bed facility.
Over the past year, Novant Health has significantly expanded its footprint in South Carolina, adding three hospitals and 27 physician practices. It also has plans to open a new full-service community hospital campus in Bluffton.
Executives told Becker’s Novant Health’s broader strategy is focused on redefining the hospital’s role within the healthcare ecosystem.
“Hospitals are large, complex and expensive,” Dean Swindle, executive vice president, chief strategy officer and president of Novant Health Enterprises, said. “We need to redefine how they fit into the ecosystem. For example, we have a neurology group with higher-acuity cases that ideally should be in an ambulatory hospital. But because our hospital is at 90% capacity and our ASC is only at 50%, we’re shifting cases to lower-cost settings to free up hospital capacity for more critical patients.”
As part of this strategy, the health system has also secured new contracts with Blue Cross of North Carolina and Blue Cross of South Carolina to transition outpatient surgeries, imaging, and pharmacy services into more cost-effective sites.
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