Officials from both Richmond and Columbia County joined Gov. Brian Kemp in Grovetown, Monday morning, to celebrate the groundbreaking of Columbia county’s first hospital.
Wellstar MCG Health hosted its ceremony, which included both breaking of the dirt and a beam signing, at the upcoming facility’s burgeoning construction site, on a 50-acre parcel at 5000 Gateway Blvd., behind the Columbia County Exhibition Center.
MORE: Augusta Planning Commission OKs tiny home village for foster youth
The large attending crowd included several county and state leaders, including County Manager Scott Johnson, all of the current Board of Commissioners, recently-elected and sworn-in State House District 125 Rep. Gary Richardson, former Georgia governor and current Georgia University System Board of Regents Chancellor Sonny Perdue, and Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson.
“It takes a team of teams to accomplish a project of this magnitude,” said Wellstar MCG President Ralph Turner, who presided over the event.
Many of the speakers who followed him would allude to the winding road to the hospital’s development.
“This was a complicated deal,” said Perdue, who noted stats regarding healthcare in rural Georgia, such as that 73 counties are without emergency physicians, and nine counties have no doctors. Columbia County is presently the most populous in the state without a hospital. “That’s why we’re celebrating here, because it is the culmination of a lot of work.”
Construction finally begins after some 10 years of contention. In 2014, when Augusta University, Doctors Hospital and University Hospital (now Piedmont Hospital) filed for a certificate of need (CON).
The Georgia Department of Community Health ultimately granted AU Health, now Wellstar MCG, the CON, a decision that went challenged by Doctors Hospital and University Hospital (though the latter would drop its appeal). In 2021, the Georgia Supreme Court elected not to review a ruling by the Georgia Court of Appeals one year prior upholding the decision.
Since then, AU Health has merged with Wellstar, and Columbia County established its Hospital Authority to streamline funding for the new facility.
The new Wellstar MCG hospital in Grovetown will be more than 250,000 square feet, with 100 adaptable beds, an emergency department with a Level II trauma center, imaging labs, a surgical floor that will include operating rooms and radiology and endoscopy labs.
The campus will also include a 90,000-square-foot medical office building housing primary care, women’s care and other specialty facilities.
“We get the opportunity to pitch our state all the time and talk about the Georgia way,” said Kemp in his address, lauding the Board of Commissioners and the Hospital Authority while underscoring what he indicated was an effective partnership between state and local governments and the private sector. “I will tell you, days like today would not be possible without the support of the local leaders.”
Construction on the Wellstar MCG Columbia County Hospital is expected to be complete in 2026.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
