(The Center Square) — When officers in Lee County attempted to construct “a small acute care hospital” with 60 beds and 4 working rooms, it all started a multi-year procedure that price hundreds of thousands of greenbacks and did not finish with the development of a facility.
“When we started our quest to build a hospital, we knew that it was going to be an uphill battle,” Billy Mathis, the Lee County Commission chairman, informed lawmakers all the way through a Senate Study Committee on Certificate of Need Reform listening to on Monday. “For the first couple of years, after you are granted a certificate of need, you fight litigation. The code in Georgia encourages litigation, basically. So, you get your certificate of need, and then all sorts of folks sue you — to put it very plainly.”
State officers licensed Lee County’s request for a CON. State officers gave 4 extensions however in the long run revoked the CON it granted to the county, which deliberate to factor $135 million in bonds to fund the venture, Mathis mentioned.
“We spent a lot of money, and we won all of those battles. But to win those battles, you spend millions of dollars, and you waste a great deal of time,” Mathis mentioned. “Under the law, the state of Georgia can pull your certificate of need, really at any time, just because a bureaucrat in Atlanta decides that’s what should be done.
“The certificates of want laws in Georgia do an excellent activity of what they are supposed to do,” Mathis added. “The certificates of want laws in Georgia are supposed to stifle pageant.”
While state lawmakers explored changing or eliminating Georgia’s CON requirement during this year’s legislative session, they ultimately didn’t act.
State Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, introduced Senate Bill 162 to repeal the CON mandate. While the Senate did not advance the measure, it passed SB 99 to scrap CONs for rural hospitals and likewise signed off on Senate Resolution 279 to create the learn about committee.
“We need to make certain that all Georgians — rural, city, another way — could have ok — now not simply ok, however high quality hospital treatment, and that’s the reason what we are on the lookout for,” state Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Dawson, mentioned all the way through the listening to.
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