Prisma breaks ground on new $138M behavioral health hospital
After nearly a decade of planning, local and state leaders, including Gov. Henry McMaster, joined Prisma Health leaders to break ground on a new $138 million behavioral health hospital May 19.
The three-story, 112-bed facility will occupy a 46-acre campus at 4906 Old Easley Bridge Road near the intersection with S.C. Highway 153 in Easley. The hospital is expected to open in January 2027.
The new hospital is an example of what can be achieved through public/private collaboration and would not have been possible without $100 million in funding from the state Department of Health and Human Services, said Mark O’Halla, Prisma Health’s CEO and president.
Expanding access
The new hospital will nearly double Prisma’s inpatient behavioral health capacity and quadruple the number of beds available to serve children and adolescents. It will replace Prisma’s 65-bed Marshall I. Pickens Hospital, which was built in 1969.
McMaster said the caliber of South Carolina’s people has driven the state’s economic and population growth, which makes it incumbent on state and local leaders to invest in institutions and services that ensure the wellbeing of those people.
“What we’re doing today (makes it) a very momentous day,” McMaster said. “What we’re doing today is a great step forward.”
The new hospital will serve the behavioral health needs of a growing community and significantly reduce the need for patients and their families to travel for treatment, said Karen Lommel, the Robert A. Jolley Jr. Endowed Chair of Psychiatry and Community Health for Prisma Health in the Upstate.
“I see the life-saving value to having access to the right treatment at the right time,” she said.
The need for inpatient psychiatric treatment has climbed in the Upstate in recent years, with the combined admission rates from Pickens, Oconee and Greenville counties jumping by nearly 50%, according to Prisma. Last year, more than 1,000 behavioral health patients, including children as young as 6, were transported to facilities as far as the coast because there weren’t enough licensed psychiatric beds in the Upstate.
Lommel also announced a $1 million gift from the Sargent Foundation toward the creation of the Sargent-Wilson Wellness Center within the new facility.
The center will provide patients recreation and educational programming but also serve as a resource hub for community members.
The new hospital is part of a broader $143 million Prisma is making to expand inpatient and outpatient mental health services in the Upstate, which includes the January opening of its Behavioral Health and Wellness Pavilion on the campus of Greenville Memorial Hospital.
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