One year ago, I joined this vibrant community. And after a year as president of Novant Health Coastal Region and Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center, I thank you for the warm reception. I love hearing great stories about our amazing team, how excited you are about the growth in our region and what you would like to see Novant Health bring to our community.

Over this past year, you have seen us open the doors to new facilities. Believe it or not, I didn’t singlehandedly build the walls to the first Novant Health Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic in Wilmington. But I am proud to be the leader of the team that brought this valuable service to our community. It took foresight and dedication to build this clinic, which is providing expert care to community members who previously faced daunting barriers to primary care.

We also held a grand opening for the Novant Health Scotts Hill Medical Office Building. The construction crews refused to let me run the big equipment that poured the concrete and raised the beams. But I was allowed to greet community members as they got a first look at the impressive new facility, which is bringing important medical services closer to the growing population in New Hanover and Pender counties. 

2025 and beyond

Both of these amazing stories are continuing, too. 

The second Wilmington location (and fourth in North Carolina) of the Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic will be opening in February. And we continue to make progress on the Novant Health Scotts Hill Medical Center, a new 66-bed hospital with three stories covering 250,000 square feet – so maybe there’s still a chance to put my hardhat to use! 

Even with these new facilities, we still need more space and more physicians to care for our growing population. So, we have locked in 150,000 square feet of medical office space near Shipyard and Independence boulevards. That will allow us to expand and grow clinical serves and provide space for all of the new physicians and advanced practice providers we plan to hire in the coming years.

Access and advancement

We continue to create opportunities for our community members to live healthy and thrive by bringing advanced treatment options to our region. 

In 2024, we introduced GammaTile, a new targeted radiation therapy that attacks brain cancers with limited impact on healthy tissue. We added the TMINI miniature robotic system, which advanced knee surgery. And we implemented our Hospital at Home program, which earned very positive satisfaction scores from patients receiving a hospital level of care in the comfort of their own homes

Our dedication to the future of healthcare is evident in several new initiatives:

• We unveiled a simulation lab in Wilmington to support hands-on training for more than 90 resident physicians.

• We invested $1 million in clinical research efforts to launch joint Novant Health and UNC School of Medicine studies on treatments for pediatric asthma and advanced prostate cancer. 

• We launched a new psychiatry residency training program in partnership with Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune.

• And finally, we took mammography on the road with our region’s first mobile unit, which increases access to breast cancer screenings – I wonder if I can convince them to let me drive the bus?

Cheers to a wonderful first year in Wilmington! Let’s thrive together for years to come.