Parkland Medical Center broke ground on a $16 million freestanding emergency room at 53 South Broadway in Salem, on the site of a former Rite Aid near Interstate 93 and across from Tuscan Village. The 24/7 facility is expected to open in summer 2027 and will bring hospital-level emergency care within a 15-minute drive for roughly 30,000 residents.
According to the New Hampshire Union Leader, the new Salem ER will be staffed by board-certified and board-eligible emergency physicians, specially trained emergency nurses and support teams. The facility is designed to provide around-the-clock care for heart attacks, strokes, severe injuries and other conditions, with care teams coordinating transfer to an appropriate hospital whenever a patient needs to be admitted.
What the New Building Will Offer
Plans call for 12 private patient rooms, including a fully equipped trauma bay, along with CT scanning, diagnostic X-rays and onsite laboratory testing, per the Union Leader's reporting. The site will also include both a walk-in entrance and a covered ambulance entrance. Parkland Medical Center CEO Whitney Fenyak said the Salem location will provide families a convenient place to get hospital-level emergency services.
Fenyak also told NH Business Review that the facility will provide 24-hour imaging, including ultrasounds and X-rays, along with blood products and emergency transportation to other hospitals as needed. The outlet also reported that, unlike a traditional hospital, the Salem ER will have no overnight stays, since it's designed to stabilize and treat patients before sending them home or transferring them elsewhere.
A Faster Option for Time-Sensitive Emergencies
Devin Keefe, Parkland Medical Center's medical director of emergency medicine, said a shorter trip can help people get evaluated more promptly when time matters. The groundbreaking drew Parkland executives and local leaders to the South Broadway site this week, according to the Eagle-Tribune, which reported that the facility is going up in the former Rite Aid location and is expected to open in the summer.
The Salem project is one piece of a broader push by HCA Healthcare into freestanding emergency care in New Hampshire. The company has developed the Salem ER alongside a Nashua ER and a Capital Region ER in Concord, and has also undertaken an expansion and renovation of the hospital-based emergency department at Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, as part of what HCA Healthcare describes as a recent $50.5 million investment in expanding emergency care across the state.
Following a Statewide Pattern
Salem's planned facility is similar to Parkland's existing Plaistow Emergency Room, which opened in October 2023, NH Business Review noted. HCA Healthcare opened New Hampshire's first freestanding emergency room in Seabrook back in June 2017, and a 2026 commentary in Seacoastonline noted that similar facilities were already operating in Seabrook, Dover and Plaistow, with another expected soon in Nashua.
That Nashua project has since moved forward. Catholic Medical Center broke ground on a $16 million freestanding emergency room there, according to the Union Leader, which reported the 11,000-square-foot building was under renovation and expected to open in mid-2026. WMUR later reported that the Nashua facility was completed in July and opened with 11 private treatment rooms staffed by emergency medicine physicians, along with on-site lab testing, a CAT scan and X-ray capabilities.
Catholic Medical Center CEO John Skevington told WMUR that rising demand for emergency services is driving the shift toward freestanding facilities. “Demand for emergency services has been rising, and so the free-standing strategy is not making patients wait longer; it's about providing a solution. This is one of our solutions,” Skevington said. For Salem residents, that solution is now rising at a familiar intersection — the old Rite Aid lot that will soon house a round-the-clock emergency department of its own.
