Moratorium on new Floyd County hospital approved

For the next 300 days at least, Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services (FMHHS) is safe from competition.

At a special meeting of the Floyd County Board of Commissioners held yesterday afternoon, Commissioners Chuck Freiberger and John Reisert voted in favor of 300-day moratorium that would limit the number of acute care beds in the county and assemble a task force to study the healthcare needs in the county.

"I'm in favor of Floyd Memorial and I don't want to see their programs cut," Freiberger said.

The moratorium was also amended yesterday to include an exemption procedure requiring parties interested in building hospitals in the county area to seek approval from the County Commissioners. In order for the exemption to pass, however, it must be demonstrated that the proposed hospital would not damage the viability of FMHHS.

Mike Naville, an attorney representing a group of doctors led by Louisville cardiologist Chris Stavens that want to open a private, 42-bed hospital on Charlestown Road, called the exemption amendment "laughable."

"I don't see how it will ever work," Naville said.

"Disappointed" was the word Stavens used after the commissioners delivered their decision in a 2-to-1 vote with Commissioner Steve Bush voting against the moratorium.

"I still have the room to make some more options," Stavens said.

The next likely step for Stavens and his group, Naville said, is to file an injunction against the moratorium in federal court.

Legal action is exactly what Bush was concerned about and was a large part of his reasoning for voting against the moratorium.

"We don't want to violate the law," Bush said.

The newest addition to the board of commissioners, Bush said that the moratorium created a monopoly environment for the county hospital, which Naville said was a violation of anti-trust laws. He has also stated that competition would only benefit residents in the county because it would increase the level of care available and drive down costs.

For the past month, the two parties and their lawyers have met to try to come up with a solution that would allow both businesses to operate in Floyd County, but the two parties couldn't reach any type of mutual agreement. Naville asked the commissioners to table the moratorium for another 30 days, in an attempt to further the mediation effort, but that request was denied.

With a new $65 million expansion to the county hospital under construction, FMHHS attorney Scott Waters said now isn't the time to test the viability of the FMHHS.

"This issue of the moratorium is not against this particular hospital," Waters said. "If you don't do a study before you act, you could have a detrimental effect on the community for years to come."

The expansion effort includes an acute-care heart facility and a new emergency center that will nearly triple the bed count of the current emergency room.

"We are building for the future needs and the present needs of our community," said FMHHS President and Chief Executive Officer Bryant Hanson, who was flanked by hospital staff and supporters at yesterday's meeting.

Hanson said that the county has been on diversion in recent times, directing patients to other hospitals, but that the new expansion would alleviate that problem.

"We will not be on diversion come fall," Hanson said.

Waters and FMHHS had also raised the issue in the past several meetings of the County Commissioners that indigent care in the area would not be shared between the two hospitals and that the county hospital would bear the brunt of caring for those with no insurance and limited financial means.

Although the proposed hospital would have included a 4-bed emergency room and the doctor's group had pledged to take on indigent patients, Reisert was skeptical that the emergency facility in the for-profit hospital would stay open for longer than a year and is convinced that it would turn into a specialty hospital.

"This is a guise to get a heart hospital into the community," Reisert said.

Reisert said he felt that the hospital could be put at risk financially, due to the undertaking of the $65 million expansion and that it wasn't the time to test out that theory.

"I'd rather see what happens in 300 days," Reisert said. "I don't know of any other decision that we've made here that I've agonized over as much."