Work starts on Indian Land’s new $300M hospital complex. Here are 5 things to know
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- MUSC Health broke ground on a $300M, 150,000-sq-ft hospital in Indian Land.
- Facility to provide advanced cardiology, cancer care, maternity and research.
- Hospital addresses local growth; 91% of residents sought care out of state.
The trees are cleared and the dirt is waiting to be leveled on a $300 million medical complex that will bring a Indian Land it’s first hospital. So, what should residents expect?
About 100 civic leaders and MUSC Health professionals held a groundbreaking event Friday morning. Officials with the Charleston-based biomedical research institution described a new kind of hospital with advanced care not seen in the panhandle area.
The Herald spoke with the people in charge of the hospital project to find out what is coming, when it will get here and how it might benefit patients in the area.
Where will the Indian Land hospital be?
Healthcare officials gathered on the hospital construction site at 9258 Charlotte Hwy. That’s just south of Marvin Road and just north of where Lowes Foods, Target and Costco will open next month. The hospital will be 2 miles south of the North Carolina state line.
It will go on the east side of U.S. 521, on an 84-acre property that MUSC Health acquired from the Griffin family in 2020.
Construction has cleared 28 acres, and the remaining acreage won’t be cleared, said MUSC Health Catawba Division CEO Scott Broome. Dirt will be moved toward Charlotte Highway to level the area and put the hospital along the roadfront.
The hospital’s location, in one of the fastest-growing areas of the country and just south of a state line, is a major reason it’s being built.
“The best care is local,” said MUSC President David Cole. “This is why we’re standing here today.”
What will the Indian Land hospital have?
While the focus is on the hospital, the new medical campus in Indian Land is even bigger.
The 150,000-square-foot hospital will offer surgeries like kidney transplants, advanced cardiology care, an emergency department, a women’s center with delivery and maternity services, robotic-assisted procedures and a range of cancer services. As part of a research system, there will be clinical trials and research there, too.
Beside the hospital, a 62,000-square-foot medical office building will offer specialty services. MUSC Health is in conversation with local physicians to determine what will go there, and Cole expects new services to be added.
“I anticipate that’ll change as the community continues to grow,” he said. “So view this as a start point.”
When will the hospital open, and why in Indian Land?
The medical office building is scheduled to finish construction late next year. It would open to patients in early 2027, Broome said. Likewise, the hospital should wrap construction in late 2027 but open in early 2028, he said.
“Our obligation is to change the future of healthcare, in partner with communities, as quickly as we can,” Cole said.
The effort to open a hospital in Indian Land is a race against growth.
The Lancaster County panhandle had 40,680 residents at the 2020 Census. That’s nearly 1,000 people more than Florence, the 10th-largest city or town in South Carolina at the time. The panhandle’s population was more than half of Rock Hill, the state’s fifth-largest municipality at 74,372 residents. The panhandle had nearly double the population of the next largest city or town in the Rock Hill region, Fort Mill (24,521).
By mid-2023, the panhandle had 43,048 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“The campus represents the future of medicine, built from one of the fastest-growing regions in our state,” Broome said. “That is undeniable.”
MUSC Health isn’t the only hospital system to notice the need in Indian Land.
Piedmont Medical Center, after opening a Fort Mill hospital three years ago, recently announced plans for a freestanding emergency department in Indian Land by next spring. Indian Land is also close enough to the Charlotte market for patients to use hospital systems like Atrium Health.
Growth may be the easiest reason for why Indian Land is getting a new hospital, but there’s another one that means just as much to MUSC Health.
“It’s more than merely the growth,” Cole said.
Will Indian Land use the new hospital?
The most common theme among healthcare professional Friday was location.
“We believe strongly that South Carolina should take care of South Carolinians,” Cole said. “We have the quality of people, the quality of care and the ability, to take care of our own.”
Indian Land residents “do not need to be crossing that state line,” said MUSC Board of Trustees member Terri Barnes, a Rock Hill native whose family uses Lancaster Medical Center. When MUSC Health studied Indian Land several years ago, Broome said, it found 91% of residents went outside of South Carolina for medical care.
“That obviously signaled to us that we need to be able to provide services here,” Broome said. “Indian Land grew so quickly that the infrastructure, including health infrastructure, just didn’t keep up.”
Few places are growing like Indian Land, but some of the closest spots by population increase also happen to be closest on the map.
York County, south Charlotte, western Union County and other parts of Lancaster County are surging, Broome said. Which is why MUSC Health sees opportunity even with other healthcare companies in or near the area.
“The demand for the services here is unquestionable,” Broome said.
Will the Indian Land hospital add anything different?
The full spectrum of cancer care and advanced cardiology at the new Indian Land hospital are uncommon among smaller suburban facilities, Broome said. Officials also point to the research element of MUSC as something other providers can’t match.
“Our real mission is to innovate and to change what we can actually do in healthcare,” Cole said.
The Catawba Division, which includes hospitals in Lancaster and Chester counties, announced a new residency program this summer. Eight internal medicine physicians per year will train in Lancaster County after completing medical school. The program could expand to other specialties.
About half of physicians who complete medical school in South Carolina practice long-term in the community where they start, Cole said. That number increases to more than 75% if a physician finishes medical school and residency training.
The Lancaster County residency program could provide medical professionals for decades across the region, officials said.
“We are facing shortages of every dimension of healthcare provider — nurses, physicans, techs — now,” Cole said. “We’re going to be getting into crisis mode across the nation soon. One of the assets that we bring is education.”
The Indian Land hospital’s connection to the Charleston-based medical research organization means the latest care will be available, even as new treatments and procedures emerge.
“The future of healthcare in South Carolina is being built right here in Indian Land,” Barnes said.
This story was originally published September 26, 2025 at 3:41 PM with the headline "Work starts on Indian Land’s new $300M hospital complex. Here are 5 things to know."
