A major hospital system that operates two hospitals in Georgia has bought a 40-acre property in Atlanta just south of I-20, an area gutted by the loss of two hospitals in 2022.
The purchaser, Atrium Health, would not state its plans or even confirm that it was the buyer. The buyer was recorded in county and state records as Sunrise Properties LLC, an entity identifiable through its address at Atrium’s corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Atrium Health remains dedicated to broadening access to care in Georgia to meet the growing needs of our communities,” the hospital group said in a written statement to the AJC. “We are also excited about Atlanta’s focus on economic development and mobility and commitment to addressing the needs of vulnerable communities.”
Whatever Atrium’s plans are, it’s spending big: nearly $70 million just for the land located southwest of downtown. The site is currently occupied by MET Atlanta, a former warehouse redeveloped into a group of offices, production studios and galleries designed to draw creative workers. The sale closed Sept. 12, according to Fulton County’s property records. The sale was first reported by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
An official with MET Atlanta’s developer, Carter, said the company “remain(s) committed to the community and strongly believe(s) in the long-term potential of the area.”
Several factors raise the possibility of building a hospital in the location. Foremost, the area desperately needs one. Fulton County south of I-20 has had no hospital with an emergency room since Wellstar Health System closed Atlanta Medical Center-South in East Point.
In addition, a new Georgia law that took effect this year would make it far easier to get permission to build a new hospital there.
House Bill 1339 was a large, complex effort to chip away at the state’s “certificate of need” regulations restricting who can open a new hospital service. The bill included a provision that would virtually erase those restrictions in a specific hypothetical case of a new hospital in Fulton County that would serve former patients of Atlanta Medical Center and also serve as a teaching hospital for a medical school such as the Morehouse School of Medicine.
The new land is less than a mile from the Morehouse School of Medicine. And Atrium is already doing business with the school, running a clinic in East Point.
There are arguments against the idea, too, however. Hospital systems, even nonprofit ones, like to make money. They look for locations where they’ll have a lot of patients with good insurance needing lucrative services. But the population in Fulton County south of I-20 is lower income than average and less likely to have well-funded health insurance.
Atrium already owns two other full-service Georgia hospitals — one 637-bed facility in Macon called Atrium Health Navicent and one in Rome.
To one health care business consultant, the idea that Atrium might be planning a hospital at the Atlanta property could make sense.
Hospitals more and more like to consolidate in order to dominate a close-knit area. For Atrium, an Atlanta hospital would start to tie Atrium’s Rome and Macon hospitals into a network, said Jim Price, a consultant and principal at Progressive Healthcare, a health care consulting company. If so, Price said, “it does answer the question of, what’s Atrium doing? … Why did Atrium buy Navicent?”
Price emphasized he is not involved in any discussions and has no inside knowledge.
A key would be looking at where the location could draw patients from, Price said. If it’s close to I-20 with good highway access, that could mean attracting patients not just from South Fulton but from the western suburbs.
If there were a hospital deal, the deadline for the medical school and Atrium to take advantage of the law’s new exemption from certificate of need regulations is still two years away.
Atrium Health’s parent company, Advocate Health, is the nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system, with hospitals in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Illinois and Wisconsin. Advocate Health reported $28 billion in revenue in their 2023 annual report.
Some hospitals survive partly with government subsidies, like Grady Memorial, and many get large tax breaks. If there are discussions about a deal for the city, the county or the state to subsidize an Atrium hospital south of I-20, leaders of those bodies would not say. Spokespeople for Gov. Brian Kemp, the House and Senate Appropriations Committee chair, and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens either sidestepped the question, said they’d heard nothing or declined to comment.
Robb Pitts, chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, pointed out that the location near I-20 wouldn’t replace the old AMC-South hospital, which was further south, in East Point.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
“That doesn’t fulfill my goal of a free-standing hospital in South Fulton County,” Pitts said.
As for the Morehouse School of Medicine, officials there said in a written statement that they were “encouraged by Atrium Health’s recent property acquisition in Atlanta.”
The school’s statement also said, “This investment underscores a commitment to the economic development of our city. We look forward to future developments that enhance access to quality health care and address health disparities in our community.”
AJC staff writers Michelle Baruchman and Riley Bunch contributed to this article.
