Piedmont says it plans to spend nearly $600 million to relocate and modernize its hospital in Covington, a project the health system describes as the second-largest capital investment in its history. The company has filed a Letter of Determination with the Georgia Department of Community Health to build a new Piedmont Newton Hospital, replacing the current facility that sits on a landlocked site limiting further modernization.
According to CBS News Atlanta, Piedmont will bear the entire cost of the project itself. Piedmont Healthcare President and CEO Kevin Brown said the investment will help serve one of Georgia's fastest-growing communities, while Piedmont Newton CEO Lindsey Petrini said the relocation hospital will provide more access and high-quality care and support growth along the I-20 corridor to the east. Piedmont Newton, which the company formed in 2015 through a partnership with Newton Medical Center, is located in Covington, Georgia.
A Hospital Straining Under Its Own Growth
The scale of demand at the current campus helps explain why Piedmont is pursuing a full relocation rather than incremental upgrades. The station's report notes Piedmont Newton reported nearly 8,000 inpatient admissions in fiscal year 2026, while its emergency department logged more than 52,000 visits over the same period. The hospital currently employs around 1,000 people, including more than 500 physicians, per the same account.
Piedmont has already put money into the Covington campus even before this larger relocation plan surfaced. The company previously invested $70 million in expanding services at the neighboring community and hospital facility, according to the CBS Atlanta report. That earlier spending came alongside other systemwide capital work, including Piedmont Atlanta Hospital's Marcus Tower, which opened in 2020.
Outpatient Heart Care Already Expanding in Covington
Piedmont has been building out services at the Covington hospital ahead of any relocation announcement. In July 2025, the health system opened a heart-failure clinic at Piedmont Newton Hospital, expanding access to outpatient heart failure management, according to piedmont.org. The clinic is staffed full-time by an advanced practice provider, a nurse and a medical assistant, the health system said.
Petrini, who also spoke about the heart-failure clinic, framed it as filling a specific gap in local care. “An outpatient resource for patients who suffer from heart failure is a really large community need that we can now meet,” she said at the time, according to piedmont.org.
How Georgia's Certificate-of-Need Rules Fit In
Any large-scale hospital project in Georgia moves through the state's certificate-of-need framework, which governs capital expenditures at a hospital's primary campus, including the expansion or addition of clinical health services, according to the Georgia Secretary of State's rules. Georgia is among 35 states that still have some version of a certificate-of-need law on the books, per the Council of State Governments South, a legacy of a federal mandate Congress repealed in 1986 that prompted a dozen states to scrap their own rules immediately afterward.
Georgia's revised certificate-of-need rules give existing hospitals unlimited capital expenditures at their primary campus for certain services, such as operating rooms and procedure rooms, though that exemption does not cover additional inpatient beds, according to RPC Consulting. The same rules also let systems transfer existing beds between campuses if those campuses sit within 15 miles of each other. It is not established whether Piedmont's Letter of Determination has been approved or whether further state review is required before construction could begin.
