New Midlands ER has a plan to help prevent ‘overcharging’ for emergency care
The Medical University of South Carolina is in the process of building a new facility in Southeast Columbia that MUSC leaders say will fill a major gap in healthcare access in the city while introducing a new model it hopes to replicate elsewhere in the Midlands and statewide.
By summer 2026, a new freestanding emergency room and urgent care clinic will be open in the currently under-construction site next to the Aldi grocery store on Garners Ferry Road, where currently few medical options exist.
MUSC leadership say it’s a first-of-its-kind facility for the Lower Richland area, and will help reduce confusion when people aren’t sure if they need emergency care, or the often less expensive urgent care.
“Really from Sumter to the old Providence MUSC downtown, there is no hospital, so this is going to actually provide access to emergency room services in a hospital desert area,” said Matt Littlejohn, CEO of MUSC Health’s Midlands division.
Indeed, there are few medical resources in the heavily-trafficked and ever-growing Garners Ferry Road corridor. A new Prisma Health urgent care facility opened in the area in 2024, and a MEDcare urgent care clinic operates in a shopping strip off of Greenlawn Drive, but there aren’t higher levels of medical care in the immediate vicinity. The closest hospitals are Prisma Baptist on Taylor Street, and MUSC Health’s downtown facility on Forest Drive. Both facilities are about a 20 minute drive from the site of the new MUSC facility.
Nationally, the area where the new facility is being built is considered among the country’s most disadvantaged when it comes to factors that can negatively impact a person’s health. That’s according to an index created by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Health Disparities Research. While the areas closer to the city core are considered among the “least disadvantaged,” according to that index.
Littlejohn said the new facility will seek to improve medical access in the area. He said another goal of the facility is to cut through some of the confusion around seeking medical care when a person isn’t sure if they need emergency care, or if they can be treated by the typically more affordable urgent care clinic.
“Patients are triaged at the time of presentation, and that way they’re not overcharged for emergency room care that could have been treated at an urgent care level.” Littlejohn said.
MUSC is building the new facility on Garners Ferry Road in partnership with private-equity backed Intuitive Health, which has launched similar hybrid facilities in Texas, Florida and elsewhere in the U.S.
MUSC is further expanding its footprint in the Midlands with major renovations to its downtown hospital, and plans for a new primary care facility at the corner of Forest Drive and Trenholm Road, and another primary care facility on Knox Abbot Drive – both set to be open around Fall 2026.
