The opening of a larger laboratory at Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital marked a significant step in an ongoing expansion that will double the facility’s bed count.
Moving from a 2,460-square-foot space, the lab now occupies 4,480 square feet in a newly constructed annex to the hospital. The milestone kicked off a series of openings on the campus throughout summer and fall 2025 that align with Roper St. Francis Healthcare 2030 Strategic Plan initiatives of optimizing the system’s footprint, addressing future clinical needs and modernizing technology.
Patrick Bosse, chief administrative officer of Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital, said teammates worked for months to test and prepare new equipment in the lab while maintaining operations in the original space.
“The hard work and diligence of our team to prepare the new lab while continuing to support high-quality patient care cannot be understated,” Bosse said. “They all recognize the importance of this new, larger lab as a necessary step to serving a patient population that will double by the end of the year. The entire team at Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital is excited to offer these expanded services.”
Located at 100 Callen Blvd., Summerville, Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital has been brimming since it opened in 2019 as Berkeley County’s first full-service hospital in 45 years. To meet the community’s needs, the expansion project is boosting the hospital’s acute-care capacity from 50 beds to 100 while adding 200,000 square feet of new or renovated space to the existing 116,000-square-foot facility.
Roper St. Francis Healthcare has been recruiting new teammates to fill about 500 roles created by the expansion. Those include 17 additional part- and full-time positions for the lab staff, which totals about 30 teammates, including medical technicians, phlebotomists and lab assistants.
The new lab features dedicated office space, bathrooms and locker rooms, providing greater comfort so teammates can focus on tasks that enhance patient care. Key expanded portions of the lab include pathology and a blood bank that doubled in size, positioning the lab well to serve a greater number of patients when new beds open later in 2025.
“We love our new space because of the greater capacity to serve more people, enabling us to advance our mission of healing all people with compassion, faith and excellence,” lab manager Lisa Reel said. “We also have new, state-of-the-art equipment like chemistry analyzers that allow us to conduct labs faster. That’s especially critical when time is of the essence in areas of the hospital like the Emergency Department.”
The lab’s opening was followed later in June by a new pharmacy, as well as a new preoperative area and post-anesthesia care unit (PACU). An expanded emergency department is set to open in July, and the new hospital bed tower is expected to be operational in November.
The lab’s move into the new wing gives the next-door perioperative area some room to grow. Construction crews will start renovations that will culminate in a larger perioperative unit in April 2026.
“It’s an understatement to say that it’s an exciting time to be a part of Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital,” Reel said.