ATLANTA – The first certificate of need (CON) 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 acute-care hospital in a rural county from Georgia’s CON law, which requires applicants to show a need for any planned health-care 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 this week.
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.
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