ROCK HILL Carolinas HealthCare System is building a new Rock Hill medical office that will allow five practices to operate in one location.

Coming together at the $20 million, 90,000-square-foot facility will be Rock Hill Pediatric Associates, Shiland Family Medicine, Piedmont GYN/OB, Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute and Carolina Cancer Specialists.

The practices will share a common check-in area, a lab and X-ray facilities at what will be called Carolinas Medical Center-Rock Hill.

The patient experience, though, will be much different, said Dan Wiens, senior vice president for the Carolinas Physicians Network, which is owned by Carolinas HealthCare System.

In addition to a registration desk, patients will be able to use kiosks to check in. Regardless of which method is used, patients will be given a “hall pass” directing them to an examination room.

The goal is to keep patients from sitting in a traditional waiting room. Waiting to be seen by a doctor is the top complaint of most patients, Carolinas HealthCare officials say.

“We want to eliminate the waiting and the handing off of patients,” Wiens said.

The new CMC-Rock Hill office will be off Riverchase Boulevard, visible from Interstate 77 near Celanese Road. It is projected to open by October 2013.

The five practices that will consolidate are now in separate facilities and have outgrown those offices, Wiens said.

Those practices have about 30 doctors and serve 35,000 to 40,000 patients.

Moving to the new facility will allow Carolinas HealthCare to expand, hiring six doctors and 40 to 50 nurses, medical office assistants and front desk personnel.

“In a couple of years we will be north of 40 doctors,” Wiens said.

The additional staff will allow Carolinas HealthCare to serve 45,000 to 50,000 patients at the new office, he said.

Carolinas HealthCare also will extend its hours at the new office, Wiens said.

The new building will allow Rock Hill Pediatric Associates to expand in several ways, said Dr. Robert Alexander, who has been practicing in Rock Hill for 22 years.

Alexander recently began offering shared medical appointments, bringing in seven to 10 babies at one time with their families. That allows parents to ask questions that can be answered by other parents, he said.

Space at Rock Hill Pediatric Associates is limited for such group appointments, he said.

Having access to doctors of other specialties should improve communication among them and “improve patient care,” Alexander said.

Construction of CMC-Rock Hill is unrelated to Carolinas HealthCare System’s efforts to build a Fort Mill hospital, which is awaiting review by an administrative law court judge.

Carolinas HealthCare System was awarded the certificate of need to build the Fort Mill hospital, but Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill and Novant Health, operators of Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, are challenging that decision.

The opening of CMC-Rock Hill is not expected to affect operations at the company’s Fort Mill medical office complex, Carolinas HealthCare officials said.