Barbara Baranowski lives close enough to the new McLeod Health hospital in Carolina Forest that she could get there on foot. “I live very close, and I could probably walk if I had to, so it means a lot that when you need the care you don’t have to go across town or downtown or another place,” the Carolina Forest hospital area resident said at the hospital’s ribbon-cutting.

That is the whole story for most people who live near it. McLeod Health cut the ribbon and held an open house Aug. 27, 2026, on a four-story, 48-bed hospital that cost $90 million to build. It is expected to open to patients near October 2026, pending inspections. Until it does, a Carolina Forest resident who needs an overnight bed gets stabilized locally and then moved somewhere else.

The opening of the Carolina Forest hospital will significantly enhance access to healthcare services for the local community.

Benefits of the Carolina Forest Hospital for Local Residents

What Carolina Forest Actually Gains

The campus already had an emergency department, a surgery center and a radiology lab. What it did not have was a bed to keep anyone in overnight. The new building adds 48 inpatient beds alongside emergency care, specialty care, surgical care, imaging, lab work and rehabilitation services. A fifth floor is shelled for future expansion but is not finished space [WMBF News, 2026].

The practical difference shows up in the transfer numbers. Scott Montgomery, CEO of the Carolina Forest campus, said the campus currently sees “almost 17,000 patients through our emergency department” and that “we admit about a 10, 11 percentage of patients get admitted into inpatient care” [WMBF News, 2026].

**Run those two figures together and the range lands somewhere near 1,700 to 1,900 admissions a year — an approximation of ours drawn from Montgomery’s numbers, not a figure McLeod published.** Those are patients who, until the beds open, have to be moved to another hospital for a stay that begins with a local emergency visit. For a family, that is a second intake, a second drive and a second waiting room, usually at the worst possible time. Baranowski described the alternative from experience: “I was enchanted when I heard it was gonna be local cause I spent a three-day weekend in Little River, and as nice as it was, it was a long ride,” she said [WMBF News, 2026].

The location is not incidental. Carolina Forest is one of the fastest-growing communities in Horry County, and that growth is the stated rationale for putting a $90 million hospital there rather than closer to the beach. Health care is one of the few pieces of that community’s infrastructure catching up on roughly the same timeline as the rooftops.

Conway Medical Center abandoned a $161 million hospital planned on International Drive in Carolina Forest after opposition from residents and environmental groups over noise, controlled burns and flooding near a nature preserve, and shifted instead to a smaller emergency department on S.C. 90 [Post and Courier, 2024]. Two hospitals were planned for Carolina Forest in the same period, and one of them was built.

McLeod describes the facility as the community’s first inpatient hospital and as the first new hospital built in Horry County since 2011. Both of those are the company’s characterizations of its own project rather than findings this publication independently confirmed, and they are worth reading as such — but neither is what makes the building matter to a Carolina Forest household. Proximity is.

The Jobs Number, Stated Plainly

“We currently have about 120 hospital jobs on this campus,” Montgomery said, “adding the inpatient care will add about 75 new jobs to this community” [WMBF News, 2026]. That is roughly 195 positions on the campus once inpatient care is running — emergency department, surgery, radiology, and now the inpatient floors that require nurses, techs, housekeeping, food service and overnight staffing that an outpatient campus never needed.

The 120-plus-75 figures are what the health system stated on the day it cut the ribbon, and they are the figures this article uses.

Hospital work is among the more durable employment available in a local economy that swings hard with the tourist season. Inpatient floors run every day of the year, which makes these year-round positions rather than seasonal ones. Seventy-five jobs will not reshape the Horry County labor market. They are still 75 jobs that stay open in February.

What the Hospital Does Not Do

Alongside what the building adds, there is one service line residents should understand is absent, because it determines where an ambulance goes on the worst day of someone’s life.

**The hospital does not offer trauma services at this time** [WMBF News, 2026]. That is a plain statement of scope, not a criticism. A hospital without a trauma designation is not equipped or staffed to be the receiving facility for the most severe injuries. Those patients still travel elsewhere.

That is the part worth knowing in advance. A Carolina Forest family that assumes the new building on their side of town is now the answer for every emergency will find out otherwise at the moment they can least afford to.

It is also a normal condition for a new community hospital rather than an unusual gap. Trauma designation is a separate level of capability with its own staffing and standby requirements, and a 48-bed hospital opening its first inpatient floors is not where that work typically begins. Whether it is ever added here is a question for a later year, and McLeod has said only that trauma services are not offered at this time [WMBF News, 2026].

The distinction is worth carrying: for chest pain, a broken wrist, pneumonia, a surgical recovery, a stroke workup, an overnight admission, the hospital is now local. For catastrophic trauma, the geography has not changed.

The Cost Question Worth Asking

The other item a reader is entitled to see laid out is the price. Construction costs rose sharply across the years this hospital was being built, and scope and equipment changes between announcement and completion are routine on projects of this size. Against that backdrop, the project’s cost moved substantially while its bed count did not.

When McLeod announced the hospital in April 2024, it described a four-story, 48-bed facility at a cost of $56 million [myhorrynews, 2024; WMBF News, 2024]. The hospital unveiled in August 2026 is four stories with 48 beds, at $90 million [WMBF News, 2026]. That is roughly a 60% increase in cost against an identical bed count and an identical floor count.

Ordinary explanations are available, and several of them are probably right. Materials, labor and financing all moved against anyone building anything between 2024 and 2026. Equipment and scope added after the announcement can cost a great deal without changing a single bed. And the shelled fifth floor represents structure that was built but is not counted in the 48. Any of these could account for a meaningful share of the difference.

What is not available is McLeod’s own accounting, because McLeod has not been asked to explain it, and this publication is not going to guess at an answer on the health system’s behalf. There is no allegation here of waste, mismanagement or impropriety, and nothing in the record suggests any. There is a $34 million gap between the announced cost and the opening cost for the same number of beds, and a reader who lives in the service area of a nonprofit hospital has a fair claim on the explanation.

What Happens Next

The building is finished and the ribbon is cut, but nothing changes for a patient until the doors open — near October 2026, pending inspections [WMBF News, 2026; WPDE, 2026]. Until that clears, Carolina Forest still has an emergency department without beds behind it.

When it does clear, the change is concrete and measurable: something on the order of 1,700 to 1,900 emergency patients a year, by our arithmetic from Montgomery’s figures, stop being transferred out of their own community for an overnight stay. Roughly 75 people go to work in jobs that did not exist on the campus before. And a resident living a few streets away gets what Baranowski described — care close enough to walk to, on the day she needs it.

Two things are worth watching from here. Whether the inspection timeline holds through the fall, and whether the shelled fifth floor gets finished as Carolina Forest keeps growing. We will ask McLeod what moved the price from $56 million to $90 million, and we will report the answer.

Further Reading

Carolina Forest hospital – WMBF News — “McLeod Health cuts ribbon on new $90 million hospital in Carolina Forest” (Aug. 28, 2026): https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/08/28/mcleod-health-cuts-ribbon-new-90-million-hospital-carolina-forest/

Carolina Forest hospital – WPDE — “New McLeod Health hospital set to open in Carolina Forest this fall”: https://wpde.com/news/local/new-mcleod-health-hospital-set-to-open-in-carolina-forest-this-fall

Carolina Forest hospital – myhorrynews — “McLeod Health expanding in Carolina Forest with 48-bed, $56M hospital” (2024): https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/mcleod-health-expanding-in-carolina-forest-with-48-bed-56m-hospital/article_468ca252-0119-11ef-a38c-873dcc18b4cf.html

Carolina Forest hospital – WMBF News — “McLeod Health reveals new Carolina Forest hospital plans” (April 23, 2024): https://www.wmbfnews.com/2024/04/23/mcleod-health-reveals-new-carolina-forest-hospital-plans/

Carolina Forest hospital – McLeod Health — “McLeod Health Carolina Forest Hospital on Schedule to Open in 2026”: https://www.mcleodhealth.org/news-entry/mcleod-health-carolina-forest-hospital-on-schedule-to-open-in-2026/

Carolina Forest hospital – McLeod Health — “McLeod Health Unveils Plans for New Hospital in Carolina Forest”: https://www.mcleodhealth.org/news-entry/mcleod-health-unveils-plans-for-new-hospital-in-carolina-forest/

Carolina Forest hospital – WBTW — “New McLeod Health Hospital coming to Carolina Forest campus”: https://www.wbtw.com/news/grand-strand/carolina-forest/new-mcleod-health-hospital-coming-to-carolina-forest-campus/