Thursday, November 16, 2023
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Expansion project to double size of Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital advances
Less than four years after welcoming its first patients, Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital in Summerville has embarked on a construction plan to double in size, mirroring the booming population of the community it serves.
The facility at 100 Callen Blvd. opened in 2019, offering a full-service hospital in Berkeley County for the first time in 45 years. It has been bustling with patients ever since, and it’s time to grow with the region, said hospital Chief Administrative Officer Patrick Bosse of Roper St. Francis Healthcare.
Late this spring, the project got under way to expand Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital from 50 to 100 beds and to add 200,000 square feet of new or renovated space to the existing 116,000-square-foot facility. The effort falls in line with the Roper St. Francis Healthcare Strategic Plan 2030 to expand access to convenient, high-quality medical care throughout the Charleston region over the next decade.
The expansion project is on track to be finished in 2026 and will make the hospital the third largest of the four-hospital healthcare system.
“We have been welcomed with open arms, and the residents are extremely happy to have this facility in their backyard,” Bosse said. “But this community continues to grow at an exponential rate, and our hospital needs to grow to accommodate that.”
Among the hospital’s current full complement of services are a 24-hour emergency department, imaging and lab services, and an intensive-care unit. It features 16 rooms for mothers and newborn babies, along with four operating rooms.
Visitors will notice obvious signs of construction. Crews have begun laying the groundwork for the new buildings: utility infrastructure, sewer pipes, telecommunications, gas lines, new retention ponds. They also moved the hospital’s ambulance entrance to a different side of the building and started building two new parking lots for patients and hospital teammates.
Strides have also been made to accommodate higher patient volumes even as construction continues. The hospital recently added a mobile CT scanner – a machine that is just like a fixed scanner but located inside a trailer next to the hospital.
“We have capacity constraints for things like a CT scanner, so it’s obvious we need to grow our physical space,” Bosse said. “Our clinical offerings already look different than they did when we opened four years ago, and we will continue to evaluate what is provided so we can ensure we have the right services to match the demands of this community.”
The next stage of the project will include an official groundbreaking, followed by the pouring of the foundations for the new buildings.
Regardless of the activity, Bosse said, all patients will experience the same high level of compassionate care they expect of Roper St. Francis Healthcare.
