Ballantyne Magazine covers news, events, real estate, restaurants, shopping, health, schools and business in the upscale Ballantyne Area of Charlotte, NC.
Back in the late '80s, when big south Charlotte housing developments were springing up, the hospital at Park Road and N.C. 51 was a much different place. For starters, it had fewer neighbors — really only a few medical offices and the Wendy's across the street. It was delivering just 15 babies a month, not the 200-plus like today. Oh, and one other thing: snakes used to slither up to the hospital's front door. The snakes at Mercy Hospital
South — now known as Carolinas Medical Center-Pineville — underscore its status 25 years ago as a community hospital in a largely undeveloped part of Charlotte. It was a small outpost of the larger established hospitals near uptown. Since then, the hospital has
grown along with the region it serves. Just as people who live in Ballantyne and other south Charlotte communities can increasingly stay close to home for work, dining and nightlife, they no longer have to go uptown for most medical procedures, even serious ones. After a relentless building
spree, CMC-Pineville in the next few months will finish construction on its latest expansion — a $300 million project that has been going on for five years. When the dust settles, the
hospital will be dramatically bigger and more advanced. The number of critical care beds for the sickest patients will increase six-fold, to 30. It will nearly triple in size, to 515,000 square feet. The number of workers will have doubled, to about 1,200. And it will offer services previously available only near uptown, such
SPRING 2012
Dr. ?
Left: Dr. Kevin Smith is chief of the hospital's medical staff. Right: The neonatal unit now contains 10 private areas where families can be together.
Big Buildup
CMC-PINEVILLE NEARLY TRIPLES SPACE, BOOSTS CRITICAL CARE
By Tony Mecia Photos by Jessica Milligan
as open-heart surgery. Hospital administrators tout it
as essentially a new hospital, with no department left unimproved.
'Graceful' Growth "We don't have snakes coming
through the door anymore," says Chris Hummer, president of CMC- Pineville, during a recent tour of a new wing of the hospital. "It's a big change. We've worked to grow gracefully. … People have gotten used to the idea that this is a place I can go for higher-level things."
People in the Ballantyne
area have plenty of choices for medical care. There are, of course, doctors' offices and medical offices scattered throughout the area, offering a wide range of outpatient procedures, surgeries and other treatments. But for more advanced medical
treatments, only hospitals will do. From Ballantyne, the closest ones are CMC-Pineville, Presbyterian Hospital Matthews, Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill and the three hospitals near uptown: Carolinas Medical Center, CMC- Mercy and Presbyterian. Previously, the hospitals
uptown would handle the region's most complex cases, while those in the suburbs handled more routine events, such as childbirth. But as medicine has advanced, more complex procedures have migrated out to the other hospitals. That means that more people can be treated near where they live, closer to their family and friends and support structure. CMC-Pineville's expansion will keep many patients from Ballantyne in south Charlotte, instead of heading uptown. Dr. Kristin Strawhun, a pulmonary and critical care
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