State OKs 60-bed Madison hospital
However, hearing will be held before case goes to Certificate of Need board
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
MONTGOMERY - Madison County Commissioner Dale Strong's quest to get a hospital built in Madison is alive and well.
Late Tuesday morning, the Statewide Health Coordinating Council approved the concept of a 60-bed community hospital serving the 90,000 residents of Madison, Harvest-Monrovia, Toney and Triana.
Gov. Bob Riley is expected to OK the plan in the next two weeks. Then, Huntsville Hospital, Crestwood Medical Center and perhaps others will wrestle over the rights to the new hospital and its potentially big profits.
But there's a hitch: Athens-Limestone Hospital claims a Madison medical center would siphon away some of its patients and doctors and possibly push it out of business.
Because of Athens-Limestone's opposition, the case won't go right to the state Certificate of Need Review Board. Instead, an administrative law judge will conduct a sort of mini-trial by hearing testimony from hospital chiefs, health care consultants, local politicians.
The fight could drag on for months. Maybe years.
Strong, a volunteer firefighter and former HEMSI ambulance service field medic, said he hopes construction is under way by late 2008.
"This process right here is frustrating," Strong said after Tuesday's vote. "You've got to have a good backbone to be here."
Strong said growing western Madison County desperately needs its own hospital to treat "minor to moderate" problems, as in asthma attacks, sprained ankles and dog bites.
Huntsville Hospital's and Crestwood's emergency rooms aren't that far from Madison - about 13 miles. But Strong said patients sometimes have to wait hours to see a doctor or be wheeled upstairs to a room.
Several months ago, Strong asked his constituents to write him if they wanted a hospital in Madison. He said he got 18,000 e-mails and letters in favor, and only 40 to 50 against.
Huntsville Hospital is building what amounts to a free-standing emergency room at its Madison Medical Park near the corner of U.S. 72 and Balch Road in Madison. The $1.5 million urgent care center is due to open in February.
"That's a huge step in the right direction," Strong said, "but the bottom line is we need more definitive health care out here.
"Rather than piecemealing it, I want the whole ball of wax ... and will settle for nothing less."
Flip side
Limestone County Commission Chairman David Seibert is on the flip side of the Madison hospital debate.
If Athens-Limestone Hospital is driven out of business, his rural community, Good Springs, would be about 40 miles from the nearest hospital. With his dad in poor health, that's a scary thought.
"It's paramount to us that a hospital remain there," Seibert said. Athens-Limestone's demise "would literally cost lives, and it might be my father's."
Philip Dotson, Athens-Limestone's chief executive, said the state health plan is not supposed to be changed unless a project comes along that would provide necessary medical services to people in underserved areas.
He pointed out Madison County is hardly a health care desert: two large hospitals with more than 1,000 total beds; a separate hospital for women and children; at least two outpatient surgery centers.
Dotson said a Madison hospital is more convenience than necessity to people in Strong's district.
"The reason we are here discussing a hospital for Madison is not because of access, quality or cost-effectiveness but because Madison is an attractive health care market," he said.
Reading from a prepared statement, Dotson said a Madison hospital would also aggravate a nursing shortage in Huntsville and push patients' bills even higher. Crestwood and Huntsville Hospital are proposing to charge $1,045 and $700 a day, respectively, for a hospital room in Madison, he said.
Nonprofit Athens-Limestone charges $500 a day.
The coordinating council approved the Madison hospital 19-7, with four Huntsville-area board members voting in favor: lawyer Mark McDaniel, Dr. Bob Maynor, Redstone Federal Credit Union President Gerald Toland, and former state Rep. Jim Haney.
Four other local coordinating council members - Huntsville Hospital CEO Joe Austin, hospital board member Albert McDonald, former hospital board Chairman David Byers and Madison resident Hodges Washington - missed the meeting.
© 2005 The Huntsville Times
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