AdventHealth announces new location for Buncombe County hospital

BUNCOMBE COUNTY, N.C. (WLOS) — AdventHealth has announced its new location for a hospital in Buncombe County.

The hospital system said in a press release on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, that they plan to build the new multispecialty hospital on a property in Weaverville, off US 25/70 west of I-26.

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In the 2022 North Carolina State Medical Facilities Plan, state officials said there would be a need for 67 additional hospital beds in the Buncombe, Madison, Yancey and Graham County service areas by 2024. HCA Healthcare, Novant Health and AdventHealth all applied to build the beds and filed certificates of need with the Division of Health Service Regulation in June 2022. A spokesperson for AdventHealth Hendersonville said on Nov. 22, 2022, the hospital received notification from state health officials that its Certificate of Need application had been approved.

Original plans had the new AdventHealth hospital being built at the Enka Center off Smokey Park Highway, but in April 2023, a spokesperson for the hospital said that would not work: "After going through our due diligence, we discovered that the location we had named in the application would not work for a hospital for AdventHealth Asheville."

Mission Health filed an appeal to the state’s decision, and in a press release Tuesday, AdventHealth said this appeal led to a trial in the fall of 2023, adding that the judge in the case is "expected to make his decision in that trial in the next few weeks."

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Advent said the new location of their hospital would be "strategically positioned to make it easier for people throughout the service area to get care in a convenient location."

“We are confident in the State’s decision to award AdventHealth Asheville the CON for the new hospital," President and Chief Executive Officer for AdventHealth Hendersonville Brandon Nudd said in Tuesday's release. "With the purchase of the property in Weaverville, we are ready to move forward building this hospital."