MUSC hospital in fast-growing Indian Land will open later than initially expected

It’ll likely be late 2027 before Indian Land gets its new hospital.

The Medical University of South Carolina will open a medical office building, followed by a hospital on 84 acres of panhandle property on Charlotte Highway, south of Marvin Road. The medical building should open to patients in the second half of 2026. A year later, the hospital would open.

“Those plans are all progressing,” Scott Broome, CEO with the hospital system’s Catawba Division, told The Herald recently. “We’re in the design permitting phase on the medical office building and have begun design on the hospital.”

Last year at the opening of smaller medical facilities in Indian Land, hospital group officials talked about the medical office opening this year and the hospital next year. The updated time frame comes as permitting and construction work progress.

The new hospital would serve an Indian Land population that largely leaves the area now for advanced medical care, Broome said.

Broome’s division includes the 211-bed Lancaster Medical Center and the 82-bed Chester Medical Center. It also will include Indian Land Medical Center, which will have beds for surgery, intensive care, postpartum and delivery, cardiac services, radiology and more.

“We’ve not finalized the exact bed count yet,” Broome said.

The new hospital will have a full-service emergency room with about 20 beds. It’s likely to have four operating rooms plus full imaging and lab services.

“Kind of everything you would expect an acute hospital to have,” Broome said.

Before the hospital arrives, though, it’ll need more medical support.

Growing Indian Land medical providers

This month, Lancaster County planners will look at a rezoning request that would allow for an ambulatory, surgical or medical office building on about 13 acres at 142 McMinn Dr., near Bridgemill. It also would allow commercial buildings. No medical care provider is named in initial information made public by the county.

A separate decision involves a requested approval for 91 new homes on 112 acres off Vance Baker Road, by David Weekly Homes.

Both types of requests — new homes and new medical facilities — have become common in Indian Land.

“Indian Land has just reached the size that it needs the basic infrastructure like other municipalities would have,” Broome said. “We think a hospital is a key part of that.”

Last year MUSC opened a facility at Bridgemill that has orthopedics, sports medicine, neurosurgery, spine care, endocrinology and specialty care. Separate Indian Land sites offer primary care and physical therapy.

Indian Land’s newest clinic is a sign the area is closer to having a nearby hospital

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control lists thousands of facilities with medical licenses statewide, from tattoo places or hearing specialists to abortion clinics, birthing centers, hospice care and hospitals. Lancaster County has more than three dozen medical facilities, many of them in Indian Land.

Last year’s openings at Bridgemill aimed to grow support services that eventually will feed into the hospital.

Plus, it attempts to get Indian Land residents used to looking for care close to home. The new medical office building coming on the hospital site continues both those goals.

The 60,000-square-foot building will be three stories of primary care, internal medicine, cancer services, family practice, orthopedics, general surgery, neurology and spine care, Broome said.

Medical care close to home

Five years ago, the medical university system board of trustees voted to file for a certificate of need to move 100 beds from its Lancaster hospital to a new one in Indian Land.

The certificate of need program is undergoing changes, but historically it’s been a requirement to add most any major medical facility in the state. Hospital system officials at the time described plans to relocate beds as “moving beds and quality care to where the patients are.”

Now, plans are different.

“Almost all of it will be new,” Broome said of bed count and services slated for Indian Land. “As Lancaster County has kind of grown and developed, Indian Land has grown very rapidly.”

His Lancaster hospital serves that city and areas close to it. Indian Land, although in the same county, is almost a separate entity.

“What we find is that Indian Land people are largely, just due to proximity and things like that, they’re largely going into North Carolina for services,” Broome said.

About 90% of Indian Land resident admissions are in North Carolina, he said.

“That’s an inconvenience for patients,” Broome said. “Insurance doesn’t always cross state lines well.”

County emergency service routes shouldn’t change and Lancaster shouldn’t lose care options with the addition of an Indian Land hospital, since it’s largely two groups of patients. Adding a hospital isn’t just about competition and keeping people from going to Charlotte for care, Broome said.

“For services where time matters like stroke, cardiac care, trauma — having a hospital close where those minutes matter is a big deal for that community,” Broome said.

How set is timeline for new hospital?

Hospital officials didn’t give an estimate for when the hospital would open when they filed for state approval five years ago.

In 2020 a company applied with the county to rezone the U.S. 521, or Charlotte Highway, properties where the hospital will go to allow it there. Documents filed then didn’t give an opening date.

There have been estimates since then. Last summer when the Bridgemill medical facilities opened, hospital group officials talked about a timeline for the medical office and hospital openings about a year ahead of the current plans.

Confidence in the new timeline comes from progress made since that time, and in knowing the hospital group has the go-ahead from the state to proceed. Plans already are working through the county planning phase for the medical office building.

It took Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill more than a decade to open its Fort Mill hospital after submitting for approvals, due to legal challenges in the certificate of need process.

That Fort Mill hospital, also spurred by rapid growth in the community right beside Indian Land, finally opened two years ago.

Ongoing changes to the state approval process would largely make it easier for new medical facilities to be built, but the hospital system behind Indian Land Medical Center already has its approval. State regulation shouldn’t pose any risk in when the hospital opens, Broome said.

“We have everything we need from the state to proceed fully with the hospital,” he said.