Combination of Wake Forest, Atrium will employ 70,000. Pictured: Atrium Health Cabarrus

Oct. 9. Atrium Health and Wake Forest Baptist Health, including Wake Forest School of Medicine, are officially joining together as a single enterprise in a “strategic combination” announced today.

“We are reinventing ourselves yet again,” said Atrium CEO Eugene A. Woods.

The merger will help the healthcare giant address the challenges facing the business of healthcare nationwide. It also makes a four-year medical school in Charlotte one step closer to reality.

Charlotte is the largest US city without a four-year medical school, Atrium officials said. They said the combination will make the region the “Silicon Valley of healthcare.”

The new enterprise, which will retain the name Atrium Health, will employ some 70,000 people. Atrium celebrated its 80th anniversary this week.

Atrium has already announced plans for a hospital between Exit 25 and Exit 28 on I-77 in Cornelius.

Back in November, Woods said combining their “respective talents” would take a major step toward creating the nation’s leading modern academic healthcare system.

That includes a joint effort to build the second campus of the Wake Forest School of Medicine along with new investments in the research and innovation core in Winston-Salem.

The market footprint encompasses some 7 million people.