Atrium Health broke ground Wednesday on a 30-bed hospital in Cornelius that it expects will open to patients in 2025 with approximately 280 new jobs.
The 170,000-square foot hospital will have 30 beds, maternity suites and services, an intensive care unit with four ICU beds, two operating rooms – plus a cesarean-section operating room. The emergency department will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will have eight treatment rooms and a helipad available on site.
Services at Atrium Health Lake Norman will include mobile magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computerized tomography (CT), digital radiography, fluoroscopy, two mobile X-ray units and ultrasound. In addition, there will be onsite laboratory and pharmacy services.
Cornelius, with more than 32,000 residents, has seen a 30% growth in population since 2010, according to census numbers. The new hospital will be located in the Lake Norman area of northeast Charlotte at the southwest corner of the intersections of Westmoreland Road and N.C. 21. Atrium Health officials said the new hospital is warranted because of the area’s population growth.
The construction of Atrium Health Lake Norman, which will include nearly 30% women, minority, or veteran owned construction partners and most are local, is one part of the Atrium Health growth plan, which includes more than $1 billion in capital expenditure investment announced in 2018. In recent months, the health care system has opened the Palmetto Tower at Atrium Health Pineville, the new Atrium Health Union West hospital and medical office building and the new Atrium Health Mountain Island free-standing emergency department, as well as the new David L. Conlan Center at Atrium Health Carolinas Rehabilitation on the campus of Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center.
Based in Charlotte, Atrium Health is part of Advocate Health, the fifth-largest nonprofit health system in the United States, which was created from the combination with Advocate Aurora Health.