Data Management Coordinator

Medical school, hospitals to shape Local healthcare future, leaders say. By Cierra Noffke, posted Jul 16, 2026 Local healthcare leaders, including representatives from Novant Health, UNC Health and Atrium Health, along with UNCW and the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, spoke Thursday at the Power Breakfast. (Photo by Cierra Noffke) Healthcare leaders foresee a bright future for regional healthcare, amid rapid population growth fueling the demand for more healthcare services and workers. The Greater Wilmington Business Journal's Power Breakfast brought together leaders from the three health systems competing to build hospitals in New Hanover County, along with UNC Wilmington Chancellor Aswani Volety and Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Natalie English. The panel included representatives from Atrium Health, Novant Health and UNC Health, each of which submitted competing Certificate of Need (CON) applications in June seeking state approval to add acute care beds in New Hanover County. The applications are a response to the 2026 State Medical Facilities Plan (SMFP), instated earlier this year, which identified a need for 225 inpatient beds in the county. "This is an inflection point," said Ernie Bovio, UNC Health president of the southeastern coastal region, who spoke on the panel. "Fast-forward 20 years... you've got choice, and all healthcare systems are performing at a very, very high level. That's what this community deserves." Other panelists included Laurie Whalin, president of the Novant Health coastal region, and Steve Smoot, Advocate Health president of the North Carolina and Georgia division, which oversees Atrium. Novant Health has been the region's main healthcare provider and the largest employer since the purchase of the previously county-owned New Hanover Regional Medical Center in 2021. According to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, Novant Health held 96% of the healthcare market share in Wilmington in 2024. "A community this size deserves choice," said Smoot. "(The Wilmington metropolitan area) is the first or second largest metropolitan area with only one healthcare provider, and that's not right or wrong. It's just what happened as we're growing." Meeting a growing region's needs Panelists from UNC Health, Novant Health, and Advocate Health all acknowledged the necessity of building for growth - and the complexity of navigating a complicated CON process. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Health Service Regulation (DHSR) independently reviews each application and may allocate beds across multiple projects, though one health provider could be denied entirely. The review includes a 30-day public comment period and a public hearing scheduled for August 20 at 1 p.m. at the Arboretum Education Center. DHSR has 90 to 120 days to review the applications, and once a decision is issued, affected persons have 30 days to appeal. According to Bovio, appeals are common in CON cases, and if appeals are filed, providers would likely negotiate a settlement. "We all have a common goal," Bovio said, "So I'm confident that we'll be able to sit down, come to the table, come to a resolution and be able to support the healthcare needs of the community." UNC Health submitted an application for an $852.7 million, 150-bed community hospital this June, which would be situated on a 62-acre tract at the intersection of Shipyard Boulevard and 17th Street. The project is supported by Wilmington Health, one of the largest independent, physician-owned practices in Southeastern North Carolina whose providers are expected to work with medical staff at the new facility. Atrium's $395 million 42-bed community hospital would be located at the intersection of Military Cutoff Road and Crooked Pine Road, near the Porters Neck area. While this would be Atrium's first facility in the region, the provider managed the New Hanover Regional Medical Center Physician Group from 2009 to 2020, before the hospital's sale to Novant Health. Both Smoot and Bovio expressed the likelihood that the hospitals would grow and evolve as the need for additional acute-care beds increases. "We've done this model numerous times, and it's been fiscally conservative but appropriate to provide the right levels of care and grow with the community," Smoot added. Whalin spoke to the enormity of Novant Health's commitment to the area, as well as the provider's master plan for the coastal region, which includes Novant Health's largest capital commitment to date, at $1.26 billion. The plans, announced in February, include an eight-story, 225-bed heart and vascular tower to grow Novant's heart and vascular institute. While Whalin said the construction of the tower has already been approved, the provider must wait for state approval to add the 225 inpatient beds. "We are very excited about these plans," Whalin said. "I think, once executed, it will be really transformative for our region. I've been here in this community for about 30 years. I plan to be here for the next 30." She added, "My goal is to secure the future of healthcare for this region, and I think this plan sets us up pretty nicely to do that." Preparing a healthcare workforce Speakers said expanding healthcare infrastructure will require a larger workforce, making education and recruitment efforts as important as new hospital construction. Volety highlighted UNCW's planned medical school, while English discussed the New Hanover Healthcare Career Partnership, which aims to strengthen the region's healthcare workforce pipeline. "There's a dearth of healthcare professionals that starts all the way from nurses (and) goes all the way to MDs," Volety said. He added that by 2030, North Carolina is projected to have a physician shortage of 7,700. The proposed medical school, approved by the UNC Board of Governors in May, would follow a distributed clinical model - meaning it would rely on collaboration with surrounding hospitals, clinics, and medical practices. "Studies have shown that if a student were to go to a medical school or do their residency in a particular place, the chances of retaining them are about 40%," Volety said. "If they were to do the medical school and do their residency in the same place... chances go up to 70-plus percent." UNCW is expected to announce a founding dean for the medical school in the coming months, as it begins accreditation efforts with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting body for medical education programs in the United States. English shared details on the New Hanover Healthcare Career Partnership, which was funded with a $22.3 million grant from the New Hanover Community Endowment in 2023. The project brings together New Hanover County Schools, Cape Fear Community College, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and the chamber to expand career pathways across sectors. "The most amazing collaboration of partners has come together over the last three and a half or so years," English said, "working with the community college, the university, the K-12 system here, and the business community, to ensure that we are producing the workforce that we need to take care of ourselves, our people." Two and a half years since the initial endowment funding, English is enthusiastic about potentially receiving state or other additional funding to sustain the program, now that it has proven its efficacy. Whalin highlighted that since participating in the partnership, the Novant Health Coastal Region has hired over 1,200 registered nurses, including its largest graduating class cohort of 200. "With UNCW, our retention rate for those students has gone up 103%, and with Cape Fear Community College, it's gone up 73%," she said. "We've been able to retain those nurses at our facility 95% of the time." Watch leaders and healthcare professionals speak at the Power Breakfast here.

How APM Steam helped Atrium Health Cabarrus unlock hidden savings. APM Steam's partnership with Atrium Health Cabarrus shows how a systemwide steam assessment can turn recurring condensate issues into a clear path to efficiency gains, reduced risk, and long-term savings. Turning hidden losses into opportunity At Atrium Health Cabarrus, steam quietly supports essential hospital functions including heating, humidification, sterilization, hot water, and foodservice. Over time, campus expansions and boiler plant changes had shifted how the system operated, creating mismatches between older configurations and current conditions. Even with a capable facilities team and periodic steam trap surveys, some inefficiencies and component sizing issues remained out of sight, hidden above ceilings, behind walls, and in mechanical rooms. Key challenges included faulty steam traps that allowed steam into condensate return tanks, pump seals burning out alongside pressure issues within the tanks, and instantaneous water heaters experiencing high failure rates in their steam control valves. These symptoms pointed to a broader system health issue that couldn't be solved by treating each failure as an isolated event. A systemwide steam assessment APM Steam approached the project by looking beyond single components to evaluate the overall health of the steam distribution system. Technicians assessed steam traps, heat exchangers, pressure reducing valves (PRVs), condensate return units, and insulation heat loss to understand where energy and water were being lost and where repairs would have the greatest impact. In the process, they uncovered missing or improperly installed components, audible cavitation, pumps operating outside ideal conditions, and failed units no longer supporting efficient condensate recovery. The assessment also revealed incorrectly sized PRV stations for the current boiler plant configuration, operating pressures that no longer matched today's campus needs, and opportunities to reduce energy waste by improving condensate recovery. Rather than delivering a dense engineering report, APM Steam translated these findings into an actionable plan that connected technical observations to operational and financial outcomes. Bundled repairs built around performance Instead of addressing each issue as a standalone task, APM Steam developed a bundled scope of work designed around system performance. The proposed package included: Steam trap repairs. Custom insulation jackets and trap insulation jackets. Heat exchanger cleanings and isolation valve replacements. PRV repairs and condensate return unit improvements. An electric condensate return unit to overcome pressure and elevation limitations. This bundled model emphasized a key principle of steam system management: the best repair is often not the most isolated repair. By treating these components as interconnected, APM Steam helped Atrium Health Cabarrus move from reactive fixes toward a more strategic, performance-based approach. Projected savings and long-term value According to the executive repair summary, the proposed scope of work projected annual energy savings of approximately $144,949 and a reduction of 79,177 therms across the steam system. About $10,300 in annual savings and 6,600 therms were tied directly to condensate return improvements, highlighting the value of recovering treated water and heat energy instead of relying on colder, chemically treated makeup water. $48,869 annually from steam trap repairs. $28,936 from heat exchanger cleanings. $22,778 from custom insulation jackets. Throughout the assessment, APM Steam shared observations with the facilities team, explaining what technicians were looking for and why certain findings mattered, which created a valuable learning opportunity and supported better long-term maintenance planning. As Atrium Health Facilities Operations Manager Tom Grosso noted, the team "learned a lot of things from this assessment that we didn't know we didn't know," underscoring the value of a partner who can help hospitals understand and improve their steam systems as interconnected wholes.