CON reform bill looks to exempt rural hospitals
The first certificate of need reform bill to surface in the General Assembly this year was prompted by a specific hospital project but would have statewide implications.
Senate Bill 99 would exempt parties wishing to build an acutecare hospital in a rural county from Georgia’s CON law, which requires applicants to show a need for any planned healthcare facility in the community where they plan to locate. The legislation would apply to counties with fewer than 50,000 residents.
“This bill is a way to almost immediately expand health care into rural Georgia,” state Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-cumming, told members of the Senate Regulated Industries Committee.
Dolezal said the legislation is being driven by a private developer’s plan to build a 100-bed acute-care hospital in Butts County. The 25-bed Wellstar Sylvan Grove Hospital in Jackson is more than 40 years old and has services limited mostly to rehabilitation, he said.
“That 25-bed rehab facility is just not meeting the needs of that area,” he said.
But executives from the nonprofit Wellstar Health System told committee members exempting the proposed hospital from the CON process would let the new facility open for business close to both the Sylvan Grove facility and the 160-bed Wellstar Spalding Regional Hospital in Griffin.
Leo Reichert, Wellstar’s executive vice president and general counsel, said Sylvan Grove isn’t just a rehab hospital. Its emergency room sees 14,000 patients each year, he said.
“A new hospital is going to cause significant harm to those two (Wellstar) facilities,” Reichert said. “There aren’t that many folks there. There aren’t that many needing services there.”
Tim Kibler, vice president for government affairs for the Georgia Association of Community Hospitals, said hospitals already are having trouble finding enough employees without adding more health-care facilities.
“We have a profound workforce shortage of doctors, nurses, techs, CNAS (certified nursing assistants), virtually every provider in that space,” he said. “Were the state to have this proposal become law, it would become a case of (hospitals) fighting each other for staff.”
Committee Chairman Bill Cowsert, R-athens, a cosponsor of Dolezal’s bill, pushed back at those arguments in light of the chronic inadequate access to health care in rural Georgia.
“We have been beaten up for the last decade for not doing enough for rural hospitals,”
he said. “Here we’ve got people offering to build for free a 100-bed hospital in an area that has a 25-bed hospital. Why is that harmful?”
The committee did not act on the bill, holding it for consideration for potential
action later in this year’s legislative session.