With humble beginnings as an individual hospital, Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health has since grown into a major player in the healthcare field, most recently announcing plans to merge with Midwest health system Advocate Aurora Health on May 11.
A timeline of Atrium Health's growth in recent years, including its first hospital:
October 1940: Charlotte Memorial Hospital, now known as Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center, opens its doors. It later became the flagship hospital of Atrium Health.
October 2018: Carolinas HealthCare System changes its name to Atrium Health, launching the new brand to reflect the system's evolution from a single hospital to a health system with a strong regional footprint.
October 2020: Atrium Health and Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Wake Forest Baptist Health complete their merger. The combined health system now has 42 hospitals and more than 70,000 employees. The organizations say that Wake Forest Baptist Health and Wake Forest School of Medicine will become the "academic core" of Atrium Health.
July 2021: Rome, Ga.-based Floyd Health System — which had three acute care hospitals, a behavioral health facility and primary and urgent care network — joins Atrium. The acquisition made Atrium a 40-hospital system with more than 1,400 care locations in the Carolinas, Alabama and Georgia. The systems first signed a letter of intent in November 2019, and Floyd cited financial pressures and competition as the reasons for pursuing the deal.
February 2022: Atrium reveals plans for its $1.5 billion innovation district, which will surround its future medical school, the Wake Forest University School of Medicine Charlotte. It will create about 5,500 on-site jobs and $415 million in earnings. The first four-year class of medical students will begin in 2024. The system later announces that the district will be named "The Pearl" after Pearl Street Park, the first African American park in Charlotte and the only remaining landmark of the once-thriving African American community formerly known as Brooklyn, which was displaced and largely destroyed in the 1950s and '60s.
May 2022: Atrium and Advocate Aurora Health, dually headquartered in Milwaukee and Downers Grove, Ill., announce plans to merge into a 67-hospital system with upward of $27 billion in revenue and 158,000 employees. The joint system will be headquartered in Charlotte and will have more than 7,600 physicians and footprints in Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. It will have a new brand of Advocate Health.