MCEDP

Easy access to innovative and state-of-the art health care is important to the quality of life in any community, but health care is particularly significant in Moore County for several reasons:

•  It is the County’s largest private industry sector employing 30% of our workforce.
• Our local health care system, FirstHealth of the Carolinas, is the County’s largest private employer.
• Moore County has 35.1 physicians per 10,000 population, compared to North Carolina at 24.3. Wake County, the most populous county in NC and home of the state capitol Raleigh, has 25.1.
• Senior adults (65 years and older) make up 27% of our population, and the wide variety of health care options available in Moore County help support the needs of this important demographic and help attract new retirees to locate here.

Sandhills Community College (SCC) broke ground on Foundation Hall, a new 36,000 square-foot facility that will house SCC’s nursing program and other health sciences programs on its Pinehurst campus.

Foundation Hall

The new home of Sandhills Community College’s flagship nursing program, Foundation Hall, is taking shape adjacent to Kennedy Hall on the Pinehurst campus.

“It is a building that is built to help us perform our core mission. The core mission of Sandhills Community College is to train the workforce, and the workforce in Moore County and Hoke County is very heavily ‘medical.’  So this building is not just the college’s building; it is indeed the community’s building,” said SCC’s President Dr. John Dempsey.

The project also involves the renovation of Kennedy Hall, where the nursing program is currently based.  In total, the work will create a modern 75,000-square-foot facility for SCC’s nursing program as well as other health sciences programs like radiography, surgical technology, respiratory therapy, and emergency medical science.

The new building will include a 225-seat lecture hall, offices, skills labs and a large classroom for EMS training. The project will double the program’s capacity to provide space for advanced students to practice on sophisticated training equipment that simulates a real hospital environment.

Nursing graduates are in high demand at FirstHealth and other health care providers throughout the region.  SCC plays a critical role in fulfilling a need for qualified nurses that has never been so apparent as it has in the last year.

With the addition of Foundation Hall, the college anticipates growing its nursing program to 200 students total, or 100 graduates in each class.  With an 18-month construction timeline for the entire project, the new building is projected to be completed in time for the 2022-2023 academic year, followed by the Kennedy Hall renovations.

“Access to health care is of course the foundation to a vibrant community, so we think the graduates from Foundation Hall will assist in the growth and capability of FirstHealth, whose success is indeed vital to this community,” said Stan Bradshaw of the Stan and Jean Bradshaw Foundation that is helping to fund the project.

For more information, visit www.sandhills.edu.

(Original article from The Pilot)