Methodist tops rival in court challenge

Olive Branch hospital can perform procedure

Memphis-based Methodist Healthcare has prevailed in a Mississippi court battle with rival Baptist over the right to perform a type of coronary procedure at Methodist Olive Branch Hospital.

The Mississippi Supreme Court, in a decision handed down Thursday, sided with Hinds County Chancery Court in supporting the Mississippi Department of Health’s 2014 decision allowing Methodist to perform the procedure, known as a percutaneous coronoary intervention. The procedure is a type of cardiac catheterization.

The Baptist system, also based in Memphis, operates Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto in Southaven. Baptist opposed the Methodist application when it was before Mississippi Health Department officials on the grounds that the Olive Branch hospital didn’t meet several state requirements.

After the Health Department granted the request over Baptist’s objections, Baptist appealed to Hinds County Chancery Court challenging only two of the requirements that Baptist had initially contested — that the Olive Branch facility didn’t meet minimum population requirements for the area it served, and that the hospital did not meet the standard for the minimum number of diagnostic catheterization procedures performed in the two years before application for the type of program Methodist now wanted.

Supreme Court justices sided with the Health Department and Chancery Court on each point.

“We find substantial evidence that Methodist’s application substantially complied with the State Health Plan and was consistent with its requirements,” said the court’s nine-page written opinion. The court added that it gives “great deference to (the Health Department’s) decisions.”

Baptist long opposed the entry by Methodist into the DeSoto market before Methodist finally won a Certificate of Need in 2010, allowing it to establish a hospital on the opposite side of the county from Baptist’s Southaven facility. The hospital opened in 2013 and quickly exceeded its anticipated number of emergency room visitors in the first year with about 25,000.

Since then, Methodist has continued to expand services in Olive Branch. Methodist applied in 2014 to add the contested cardiac procedure, known as a PCI, after Mississippi’s Health Department modified its requirements to allow the procedure in hospitals without an on-site, open heart surgery program, which the Olive Branch hospital did not have at the time.

The move prompted the challenge from Baptist, which won a public hearing to air its objections before the Health Department subsequently granted the Methodist request.

The high court said Thursday, however, that the Health Department’s analysis was “supported by substantial evidence, and Baptist failed to meet its burden of proof.”