Trident Health commits to spend millions more on its North Charleston campus

SOURCE: The Post and Courier
AUTHOR: Mary Katherine Wildeman

Trident Medical Center is on Medical Plaza Drive across from Charleston Southern University. File/Brad Nettles/Staff

As health care needs expand in the low country, a company that has called the area home for decades is investing about $80 million into its existing facilities. 

Trident Health disclosed recently it plans to spend $22.7 million mostly on renovations to the second floor of its hospital off U.S. Highway 78 in North Charleston. The announcement adds to tens of millions the company was already planning to spend on its two local medical centers.

The project would also add six acute care beds to the facility, which currently has more than 300 beds, according to information from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. 

Trident Medical Center was already slated to get a $34 million face-lift to four other floors, plus an expansion of its cardiovascular and neurology services and investments in new technologies.

“The investments are the result of patients’ continued trust in the care we provide and a commitment to new technology to diagnose and treat life-threatening diseases,” a Trident Health spokesman said in a statement. 

The medical center across from Charleston Southern University is in a prime spot close to U.S. Interstate 26, convenient to Ladson and Goose Creek. Trident Health is also spending $24 million in renovations to its emergency care services at its other local hospital, Summerville Medical Center. 

The second-floor upgrade in North Charleston has to wait until the hospital completes a plan this summer to move all of its women’s and children’s services from North Charleston to Summerville.

Trident Health is owned by HCA Healthcare, a Tennessee-based chain. The company operates the only hospital in Berkeley County for the moment, but that will not be the case for long.

Roper St. Francis and is scheduled to begin operating a 50-bed medical later this year in the Carnes Crossroads development.

Also, the Medical University of South Carolina has plans to build a Berkeley County hospital near Summerville. 

Trident Health is planning new hospitals of its own, too, though they will be smaller, specialty facilities. A $35 million behavioral health hospital  is planned for a recently purchased tract close to the main campus. And plans are in place to open a $12.5 million freestanding emergency department on James Island.