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Gov. Brian Kemp alongside Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts at the groundbreaking of Grady's new freestanding emergency room in Union City, on April 9, 2025.
Credit: Sofi Gratas/GPB News
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New emergency room coming to South Atlanta aims to fill health care gaps
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LISTEN: Grady Health Systems broke ground on a freestanding emergency room in Union City on Wednesday, as part of larger plans to improve access. GPB's Sofi Gratas reports.
The groundbreaking of Grady Health System’s first freestanding emergency room on Wednesday left hospital system leaders, legislators and Union City constituents excited about the future of health care access in the area.
A freestanding ER operates just like any other emergency room, with no hospital beds for long-term stays, but without a physical connection to a larger hospital system.
The plan to build one south of the Interstate 20 corridor was set in motion by Fulton County and Atlanta-based Grady after the closure of two major metro Atlanta hospitals on the heels of the COVID pandemic — WellStar’s Atlanta Medical Center and Atlanta Medical Center South.
At the time, WellStar cited financial troubles from the high cost of uncompensated care as the reason behind the closure. The decision to close the hospital which for years served many underinsured and uninsured patients was met by criticism from local and state leaders, who responded by lodging a series of complaints to the federal government.
Grady is one example of so-called "safety net hospitals" that have had to manage the resulting backlog of patients seeking care.
Once built, Grady’s new emergency room will have 16 beds. It won’t completely fill the gap left behind by WellStar, but Union City Mayor Vince Williams said he expects the facility will improve the wellbeing of his community and others in South Atlanta.
“Dreams do come true,” Williams told the crowd on Wednesday. “For far too long, our families have lived in a health care desert, traveling too far, waiting too long and suffering too much. That ends today.”
It’s the first such facility south of I-20 as the construction of others await approval from the state. The goal is to greatly reduce the 25- to 40-minute transit time faced by South Fulton residents who need emergency health care.
The new ER is one piece of a response to the closures, said Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts. In 2022, through a collaboration with the Morehouse School of Medicine and an accounting firm, Fulton County sought to identify the depth of health disparities across its geography and create a report.
“What we found was that thousands of residents in South Fulton County did not have ready access to a hospital or physicians,” Pitts said.
Lack of access to primary care can result in worsened chronic conditions and poor health outcomes overall. In an article published by the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia, Pitts said that the report pointed to a seven-year difference in life expectancy between North and South Fulton County residents.
It will take more than just an emergency room to fix that. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told stakeholders on Wednesday that over the next few years, the site in South Fulton will see additional investment.
“The big vision that we all have for this campus is ultimately to provide a full slate of medical services here in Union City,” Kemp said.
Kemp approved millions in federal dollars to Grady for the project which he called a quote “meaningful step forward.” In 2022 he set aside just north of $130 million in American Rescue Plan funds for Grady to expand its services, following the WellStar closures.
“Without the state involved at that level, we wouldn't have been able to address that, and that has been a game changer for our ability to provide care,” said Grady CEO John Haupert.
Haupert said he's grateful for the state’s support of a Medicaid-funded payment program directed to public hospitals like Grady, now up for debate as Congress considers budget cuts that could include slashing the federal Medicaid budget.
About a quarter of patients that walk through Grady’s doors rely on Medicaid to pay for their health care, Haupert said.
“Medicaid matters tremendously,” he said, though he did not express immediate concerns about cuts to the program. “Every day we're watching, we're listening, we are looking, we're analyzing anything that we hear that could potentially impact us.”
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